Thread by @el33th4xor

I can no longer keep track of all the DeFi hacks. They seen to happen at the same speed as the underlying chain.
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1330233…

A lot of the hacks happen due to bad interactions between DeFi components. For instance, a component like Uniswap/Sushi/Compound/etc think a certain routine, provided by an ERC-20, does something, but that routine ends up attacking the calling component instead.

At its core, this is a problem stemming from inability to reason about code, specifically code that implements basic functionality such as assets, wallets, multisigs, etc.

Avalanche doesn't fix all these problems, but it does fix every problem where the erc-20 attacks another contract. That's because assets are "first class abstractions" in Avalanche.

https://twitter.com/Cryptonemoto1/status/1330542921762926593?s=19

In contrast, there's no such thing as an asset in Ethereum, other than ether. Everything else is custom code. ERC-20's are all code. You cannot count on them doing or not doing certain things. At least, not without analysis, and there are no tools for that.

At least, no tools that are easily accessible on chain to other smart contracts. Uniswap cannot examine a proposed erc-20 implementation and decide if it is safe to integrate, and therefore the new coin can become an attack vector, as we saw last spring.

Tezos takes a unique approach here: everything is also just code in Tezos, but it's all in a functional language that's amenable to analysis.

In Avalanche, assets are supported by the underlying system. You know exactly what the "transfer some Xcoin" function will do, because it's not written by a third party.

This isn't as flexible as everyone writing their code willynilly, but it is absolutely predictable. Different components know exactly what they can expect from basic functions.

Hope that this characterization is useful to those looking for a DeFi/smart contract platform. ETH is a great place for experimentation, Tezos is great for analysis, and Avalanche is great if you want an easy, predictable foundation.