Re: Bad Code Has Lost $500M of Cryptocurrency in Under a Year
⭐ Merited by nullius (1)
As these events occur again and again we get to reflect on code developers and their skills. Should they even be allow to release these coins?
Everyone should be allowed to release coins. That's the whole point of being able to fork open source code -- cryptocurrencies are no different in that matter. It's only that people should be smarter than throwing their money at every new coin and token that enters the market.
I see many people signing up for bounty programs for new coin announcements even though much of the business and/or technical details are missing. The only thing the announcements seem to boast are the bounty programs. These coins still raise millions of USD.
People that sign up for bounty programs don't care much about a project's feasability. Why should they, it's free money for the most part (ignoring time spent).
It's only when people start literally buying into it that things get problematic. But they can mostly blame it on themselves, if you're honest. No one is forcing anyone to invest in something that they don't understand.
By looking at some meetups activities, it looks like the waves of new coins will continue if not pick up more speed. With such a madness to release coins so quickly, the coding errors are inevitable. But prior to talking about code bugs, the requirement errors should be first identified. I wonder if all these rapid releases even understand their own requirement.
It seems like every now and then people need to take a lesson. Many people will waste their time and money, but in the end the worthile projects will prevail and some people will hopefully end up smarter regarding what makes a good project.
Most of the Bad code is a result of companies using proprietary software. In the Open source environment, proper Peer review are done, before the code is submitted and applied. Some of these companies are in such a rush to be "first to market" that they skip beta testing and review. They want to be "first to market" and then patch like cowboys in a live environment. 
An open source environment doesn't prevent one from writing incorrect code. Case in point:
We saw what happened with rush implementation with Bitcoin XT. 
I guess you are mostly referring to applying a proper engineering methodology. Whether you do proper engineering has nothing to do with being open source or being proprietary -- it's a matter of properly assessing how critical your code is. And in crypto pretty much every bit of code is critical while most devs still seem to be in happy-go-lucky start-up land, instead of in finance.