tl;dr: a hack of Origin protocol reminds me of the existent dangers of the crypto world

I was an early participant in Origin Protocol‘s OUSD program which I heard about from Paul Verdittakit

The idea behind OUSD was to serve as a stablecoin high-yield savings account. It purported to allow you to have an OUSD stablecoin, pegged at 1:$1, but get a higher rate of return by deploying your savings in underlying finance protocols such as Compound.

It looked promising, with an APY at one point above 50%. Yeah, compare that to what you are getting.

So, naturally, I put in some money, casually glancing over the warning sign I had seen so many times.

The amount wasn’t so much that I took out an insurance policy at Nexus Mutual, but it turns out I should have.

A few days afterwards, this tweet came out.

Sure enough, as of this writing, my funds are gone and despite the pleas of the Origin team in their root cause analysis post after the hack,

To the hacker: We ask that you do the right thing and return the funds. You’ve demonstrated your superior skills as a hacker, and we’d happily hire you as a security consultant. If you return 100% the funds, we promise not to pursue you or any legal action against you. We humbly ask you to consider the hundreds of innocent people you are hurting and return the funds.

https://medium.com/originprotocol/urgent-ousd-has-hacked-and-there-has-been-a-loss-of-funds-7b8c4a7d534c

I can’t say I’m particularly optimistic about getting the money back.

But that’s ok.

When you live on the cutting edge, sometimes you get cut.

While there are many, many great things about crypto today and there will be many more in the future, there are plenty of problems.

As Fred Wilson wrote in “Bitcoin-the Gateway Drug”:

“This is a ten to twenty year trend that is just getting started.” 

Just like the Wild West…crazy at the beginning and a bit easier and safer to navigate today.