I agree broadly - and the current DAO was a terrible idea on many fronts, but I'll discuss one quibble in case it starts a broader discussion. > You can't poss

I agree broadly - and the current DAO was a terrible idea on many fronts, but I'll discuss one quibble in case it starts a broader discussion. > You can't possibly create a smart contract to purchase a house, because at the end of the day the person that physically occupies the house is in the position of power. It's likely that if something like this ever succeeded, there'd be many parties that would provide bridges between real world assets (dollars, a house, entry to an electronic lock) + real world contracts that might bridge to crypto contracts (so a trustee may hold a house under US law for a crypto title owned by others - similar to how a custodial bank holds financial assets on your behalf). You're right that the enforcement mechanism might be decoupled, but that doesn't make it worthless, as the trustee could still use the enforcement mechanism on the real world side. On the cryptocontract side, parts could be enforced like payments. So why might crypto contracts be interesting in this case: - There are too many parties involved and coordination costs are high (crypto contracts that millions of people collectively negotiate together) - The adherents are international, and may prefer a standardized form of law accessible cheaply and easily to all There are clearly an infinite number of risks - but this is just an example of how it might still be beneficial. One other point. Everyone in this recent DAO hack discusses cryptocontracts as set in stone - and the be all, end all once published. Still, you could always inject in a party that adjudicates, but only in extreme scenarios (technically, they might have root access when a few parties with conflicting incentives agreed). You might ask, doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of crypto contracts if third parties are involved - but there still may be value if the third party role is substantially diminished, or if previous forms of negotiation that never happened due to coordination cost now occur. (the canonical Bitcoin example is escrow, where the two parties can verifiably escrow money which in the real world always required a third party actively involved, and a third party in the cryptocurrency world steps in only if there are issues that the two parties can't resolve and cannot take the money itself - 2 of 3 multisig).