Thread by @DataFinnovation

as requested, a dig into the binance chains. this is a mess, and there is a lot of v hard public evidence things do not work as they should

this thread is 2/3 info and 1/3 explanations-searching-for-help

tl;dr: its not good

https://twitter.com/cryptohippo65/status/1603574228216946690

apols its a bit technical. its not ok to say "the binance chains dont look like real blockchains and fail basic token history audits" without proper evidence

so this is v clear. ppl should feel free to correct me but be specific and clear. note i link & quote code + specific txs

there are 2 chains: 1 is a geth fork w/ smart contracts. 1 is cosmos fork w/ built-in dex & other bits

both v heavily modified. the geth fork for example includes hard coded "genesis contracts" which interact w/ cosmos chain in the dark. + more oddness

arguably not blockchains

when @cryptohippo65 says they see balances without transfers they are correct. here is a transfer of 200k bnb into the token hub on the geth side

bscscan.com/tx/0xa9e30c9ca…

there is a "cross chain package" linked which takes us to

explorer.bnbchain.org/tx/CD6948F6A80…

this specifies a destination address...but searching the explorer does not find the transfer

here is a xfer from cosmos to geth which works fine

you can trace it all the way through

explorer.bnbchain.org/tx/91926C95B03…

here is one that was confirmed on the cosmos side but never reached the geth side

note its 814 days old and in status "success" but no txhash for the other side is there

this mechanism does not work

explorer.bnbchain.org/tx/33A0C1BA32C…

it gets worse. there is not even a way to check for incoming cross-chain on the cosmos side. this is why ppl see balances without transfers: even if they work they arent shown clearly.

im able to find old transfers into the bridge (hub) because i have a full node running. here it gets super suspicious.

remember i said the bsc geth thing is heavily modified? they also suspiciously recommend you run nodes from large snapshots

using the snapshots requires a pruneancient flag that definitely does not exist in normal geth

it is antithetical to the the whole idea of blockchains to do this

github.com/BNB48Club/bsc-…

running this way u can only pull 90k blocks behind head via api. older is gone via a "prunedfreezer" that was added to geth

and you cant unset the flag once running

or to quote the error message "prune ancinet flag is set, may start fail, can add pruneancient parameter resolve"

my nodes sync from 0 so i have the data.

you can google that exact string, with the typo, to github and start to see the weirdness

also the prunedfreezer is f strange
github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/…

the geth "fork" also includes bytecode for the system contracts.

see for example

raw.githubusercontent.com/bnb-chain/bsc/…

those contracts - the things which implement at least some of the bridging which causes the trouble - are supposedly in this other repo:

github.com/bnb-chain/bsc-…

two things to note. first, you can see clearly that sending and receiving across the chains are implemented differently. this explains why the explorers are not symmetric.

github.com/bnb-chain/bsc-…

worse, the code versions referenced in the hard-coded pre-compiled byte code often look wrong. the latest "gibbs" upgrade uses different code for the main and test nets.

committing byte code is weird enough. but using different version for test and prod? hm

we can now see for sure there are magical transfers between systems and these are not auditable.

or, i guess, they are auditable and they fail.

the supply of bnb does not appear to be consistently mananged across both halves of the "binance chain complex"

and the quantity of tokens in the geth-side's hub does not match the circulating supply on the cosmos side.

plus the geth side shows an additional 24mm tokens somehow?

binance reports a number close to the bnb chain

maybe thats a timing difference

but none of this adds up.

to answer @ander_hk 's question: lots of stuff here does not look to have a verifiable history. its probably not fair to call this a "blockchain" anymore

you can consider yourself an honorary technical crypto bro for having proper intuition

https://twitter.com/ander_hk/status/1603663686572408838?s=20&t=hwXCwNAH0VVehZC2kJpctQ