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I think we're just having trouble with specificity here: let me elucidate and see if we in fact agree, which I bet we will. Augur must in some way be designed

I think we're just having trouble with specificity here: let me elucidate and see if we in fact agree, which I bet we will. Augur must in some way be designed to get information from outside the blockchain, unless it only allows prop bets about things directly observable inside Ethereum. Therefore, part of the risk model for someone making a prop bet with Augur is that a trusted and verified third party at some point tells the Augur contract e.g. "Carly Fiorina did not win the Republican Nomination." All those who transact with Augur have to reason about the trustworthiness and risk model for the parties that inform the Augur contract. This is how I interpret the idea of the "signal source" in the comment above. To restate what I said above, under no circumstances should Ethereum Alarm be used to trigger the "Carly Fiorina did not win" action for a prop bet. It's too risky; we have to think about and validate the risk profile for someone cheating. What I'm guessing you're imagining is that it would be fine to instrument our prop bet contract in such a way as to say "If our trusted Augur oracle has deemed this prop bet decided, be available for Ethereum Alarm to trigger the payouts". That seems fine to me, and given the limitations in how Ethereum works, makes sense as something valuable to the creators of the prop bet markets. My larger point, poorly stated at the start, and I would say that I at least am beating a dead horse now, is that it would pay good safety dividends for neophyte Ethereum devs to get some suggested rules about using the Alarm.

pkinsky 11y ago
>My larger point, poorly stated at the start, and I would say that I at least am beating a dead horse now, is that it would pay good safety dividends for neophyte Ethereum devs to get some suggested rules about using the Alarm. This is a great point. I think a list of dos/don'ts, design patterns, and examples of complete systems built with Alarm would be very useful. > To restate what I said above, under no circumstances should Ethereum Alarm be used to trigger the "Carly Fiorina did not win" action for a prop bet. It's too risky; we have to think about and validate the risk profile for someone cheating. I don't think this is possible: you could trustlessly trigger an "It is 5pm EST November 11 2015" bet via Ethereum Alarm, but not anything more complex. This might be useful for betting on the apocalypse happening or not happening, but not much more. >What I'm guessing you're imagining is that it would be fine to instrument our prop bet contract in such a way as to say "If our trusted Augur oracle has deemed this prop bet decided, be available for Ethereum Alarm to trigger the payouts". IIRC Augur includes a semi-decentralized reputation oracle where each bet has a pool of oracles, each with a reputation maintained by Augur on the ethereum blockchain, that are paid some percentage of the total bet value. Anyone can sign up as an oracle, but to get to a reasonable reputation (and payout amount) you need a consistent reputation for correctness (or at least consensus).
- vessenes 11y ago
  I don't know much about Augur, or Ethereum Alarm :), but I think I was reading this part of the alarm site The Alarm service supports designation of certain addresses as authorized schedulers. Contracts can trust authorized calls were scheduled by an address that they authorized, allowing you to schedule calls to functions that would normally not be publicly callable. and extrapolating the "It is 5pm EST November 11 2015" trigger to "It is after 5pm EST November 11 2015 and that thing you specified you were interested in happened." I'm not sure if your code allows such a thing or not, either specifically, or just by assumption in the original contract ("Only my trusted callers will be able to call this, and I can therefore rely on them for indication of some event happening")

pkinsky 11y ago

>My larger point, poorly stated at the start, and I would say that I at least am beating a dead horse now, is that it would pay good safety dividends for neophyte Ethereum devs to get some suggested rules about using the Alarm. This is a great point. I think a list of dos/don'ts, design patterns, and examples of complete systems built with Alarm would be very useful. > To restate what I said above, under no circumstances should Ethereum Alarm be used to trigger the "Carly Fiorina did not win" action for a prop bet. It's too risky; we have to think about and validate the risk profile for someone cheating. I don't think this is possible: you could trustlessly trigger an "It is 5pm EST November 11 2015" bet via Ethereum Alarm, but not anything more complex. This might be useful for betting on the apocalypse happening or not happening, but not much more. >What I'm guessing you're imagining is that it would be fine to instrument our prop bet contract in such a way as to say "If our trusted Augur oracle has deemed this prop bet decided, be available for Ethereum Alarm to trigger the payouts". IIRC Augur includes a semi-decentralized reputation oracle where each bet has a pool of oracles, each with a reputation maintained by Augur on the ethereum blockchain, that are paid some percentage of the total bet value. Anyone can sign up as an oracle, but to get to a reasonable reputation (and payout amount) you need a consistent reputation for correctness (or at least consensus).

vessenes 11y ago
I don't know much about Augur, or Ethereum Alarm :), but I think I was reading this part of the alarm site The Alarm service supports designation of certain addresses as authorized schedulers. Contracts can trust authorized calls were scheduled by an address that they authorized, allowing you to schedule calls to functions that would normally not be publicly callable. and extrapolating the "It is 5pm EST November 11 2015" trigger to "It is after 5pm EST November 11 2015 and that thing you specified you were interested in happened." I'm not sure if your code allows such a thing or not, either specifically, or just by assumption in the original contract ("Only my trusted callers will be able to call this, and I can therefore rely on them for indication of some event happening")