The DApp-of-the-Week challenge
The link takes me to an almost empty page. It shows how many people want to participate. 23. We have less than a day until the contest begins. Two people are selected randomly. All I have to do is transfer 0.02 ETH to the address given. The price of some nice IPA 🍺. If I’m not selected, they will transfer my Ether back. It’s actually automatic. A smart contract will do it.
38 contestants including me. Just enough time to prepare a tea before it starts. Genmaicha is a kind of green tea mixed with popped rice. My weapon of choice when I need all my brain muscles.
Two nicknames start to blink on the screen. Arrogant bunny and cryptowinter. Arrogant bunny, that’s me, I’ve been using it since high school.
Cryptowinter is a young guy with a strong Italian accent. He shares his screen in the video conference. The source code of today’s challenge is already open in his editor. The address of the code gets known the moment when the contest starts. 76 lines of massive Solidity code. No comments. This is not for human consumption. At least the variables are not obfuscated.
Arrogant bunny:I check the addresscryptowinter:Copy the contract to the testnet, so we can play with it for free.
I don’t know who is watching this show. They can see Etherscan pop up on my screen.
Arrogant bunny:The balance is 0.83 ETH. We can fill the gas tank of a Toyota Highlander for that.cryptowinter:⛽
Assuming cryptowinter and I can crack the code. If we invoke the smart contract with the right parameters, it sends back the bigger portion of its balance. The rest goes to the organizers. What if we send wrong parameters? The money gets burnt. It’s Russian roulette with 5 bullets in the 🔫. Ok, nobody dies. The upper right corner shows the time left. 33 minutes.
