[bigtex88]

In simple words, he should have done what everyone else does and used Uniswap or Zapper or Sushi or ANY exchange and swapped WETH for ETH that way.

This is just a dumbass user doing dumbass things. This is basic-level stuff right here. Don't interact with contracts directly unless you 100% know what you're doing.

[UncleMeat]

But people are allowed to interact with smart contracts. To obtain the WETH he needed to do that. This is a "why do we even have that lever" kind of situation. If my brokerage had a "permanently burn all of your money" button then it wouldn't be reasonable to just say "well, people shouldn't push that button."

We can even see this with the criticism of wire fraud. Wire fraud is a huge fucking mess that occasionally costs people their life savings. The entire setup is rightly criticized (heck, even by the crypto community) for having users interact with a highly error-prone system with huge consequences.

[emteycz]

People are allowed to login as root and delete their systems too. Yes, today's software doesn't make it easy - and the same can be said about this wallet/token; this was a complex sequence of steps in the wrong direction, not a missclick.

[UncleMeat]

And a lot of ink is spilled about systems to make this very difficult, with people continuing to work to improve things. We didn't simply say "well, just don't type those characters" and move on with our lives.

[emteycz]

Exactly like in this crypto case.

[dpark]

People don’t usually store 500k on their PCs.

[emteycz]

But people run production servers on their PCs all the time.

[dpark]

The set of people running a service with a revenue of 500k on a personal device must be minuscule and the people doing it almost certainly know it’s stupid.

This is qualitatively different from crypto that allows you to burn your money on accident, while the people who build the infrastructure for this tell you is a smart, safe place to put your money.

[emteycz]

If you wire money to a Nigerian prince, it's gone too. Doesn't mean a bank is not a safe place where to put your money.

[dpark]

> This is just a dumbass user doing dumbass things.

I tend to agree. Dumbasses clearly designed this system if it allows money to be accidentally destroyed. Dumbasses doing dumbass things indeed.

[throwhauser]

> Don't interact with contracts directly unless you 100% know what you're doing.

But if you use any of the exchanges you described, you have to trust that they 100% know what they're doing.

It seems safer to avoid smart contracts and cryptocurrencies altogether.