Perhaps a comparison will help: let's say that you have 10 BTC in Poloniex. You hear that Poloniex isn't processing BTC withdrawals, along with panic that they're hacked, and use your BTC to buy a bunch of WaffleCoin and withdraw it. You sell your WaffleCoin on ShapeShift, but now the market's tanked and you end up with 9 BTC. Later that day Poloniex put out a statement apologising for the issues and stating that they're now fixed. Would you insist that they roll the trades back? What about the shorters that took profit from you?
Strange comparison.
Better comparison: a hacker steals a part of the balance from very specific accounts on Poloniex. In panic, I obviously withdraw the left-over money. Poloniex detects the vulnerability and refunds all money. I think it would be normal that Poloniex refunds the affected balances and not just anyone on Poloniex. I just cannot imagine Poloniex saying "
well, I know you lost money because of that hacker, but you withdrew the rest, so we won't give your lost money back, instead we give it to others".
Of course if I gamble with the "left-over money" on a dice site and loss it all, then I don't expect them to pay
that part back (which is your comparison.) But that has nothing to do with the hacked losses.
Or what if you invested in a startup, and then when it looked like things were going south you sold your investment at a loss. Two years later the startup is a huge, successful company. Do you insist on taking profit from the growth because you *used to be* an investor?
Strange comparison again. It has nothing to do with future profits. We are not talking about an investor who is complaining that you made huge profits after he divested. We are talking about investors who made a loss because of a cheater when he was invested and you are refunding the wrong people.
Better comparison: if one of your employees stole money directly from investors during the time I was an investor of that start-up and he would refund 2 years later, then yes, I would still expect him to pay me too.
You stated at the outset that you understand that the situation would have been different had the attacker managed to withdraw, but you're not actually following that thought through. Had that played out we'd have a total loss on the part of all the investors, and one investor who only incurred a $100 loss, and you can bet that investor wouldn't volunteer to divvy up his remaining funds among the affected investors.
What? Let's say the cheater would have won 50% of the BR, I divested to cut losses, and cheater continues to win rest of BR. Then yes, indeed, I would only have a 50% loss, while others would have a 100% loss. That's exactly right and that's why someone should divest/withdraw when he sees the site is hacked. I don't see why that investor with 50% loss would owe anything to the other investors?
Even then, you would have the decision to try to do the right thing and refund the losses (so 50% to the 50% loss dude and 100% to the rest). But in that situation I could have understand saying "
sorry investors, but that was your risk too and I cannot pay you everything so we have to sort something out". That is why I say that it depends on the situation. Still I would expect any refund to go to affected investors who had a loss and not just to any investor after the cheater.
We thought about this, but we decided that it would be too dangerous for us to spend days and weeks trying to build a magical "undo" script, completely wrecking any auditability, and potentially ending up with a screwed up data set at the end.
Why? You would do these calculations on a separate database and only calculating the refunds, not too much risk. Yes, it might take a few days (although a quick script for estimations should be possible in a few hours.) But I don't see why a little more delay would be a problem if it's doing the right thing.
What happens when someone "accidentally" places a large bet and loses? Should we undo their bet, and take the profits from the investors?
Lol what? We are talking about a cheater who won money, what has that to do with someone losing money? Obviously when a player bets, it's final. No dice site ever refunds any normal bet.
An investor that divests and withdraws is no longer part of the bankroll.
It's not about the bets
after he divested, it's about the bets
during his investment. You refunded the bets that were
during his investments. He was a part of the bankroll during that time, so he should be refunded.
Nevertheless, I've already offered to send $100 to the affected investor, so I'm not sure what more you expect?
I would expect you to understand why it's
wrong to refund the current investors and not the affected investors. And I would hope you pay back the affected investors because it's the
right thing to do as a gambling site owner - not because $100 is not much.
I am honestly surprised about the replies here. I have been following your site for months and had a pretty high opinion of it since you are a trusted XMR developer. But I really cannot imagine that you don't understand why you should refund investors who actually had a loss because of the cheater.