5 ms·

Damn, you're right. And if people use smart contracts to do things that are technically allowed, but have unexpected downsides, we should have a review system i

Damn, you're right. And if people use smart contracts to do things that are technically allowed, but have unexpected downsides, we should have a review system in place where impartial third parties review the contract language. Two people should be assigned to speak for and against the unexpected behavior, and then maybe a panel of 12 regular citizens could render the actual verdict.

bitJericho 9y ago
I see what you did there!
Pulcinella 9y ago
This is the central, glaring flaw in cryptocurrencies to me. Transferring "value" for goods and services is really more of a social problem than a scientific/engineering one. Money is a social technology that solves a social problem. Cryptocurrency is a engineering technology in search of a problem to solve.
- grandalf 9y ago
  > Transferring "value" for goods and services is really more of a social problem than a scientific/engineering one Do you mean on the margin where there is debate about the contract or whether the goods/services were rendered adequately? Cryptocurrencies don't attempt to solve this problem at all, they simply allow for efficient moving of currency between parties without the need for meatspace regulation/trust to do it. Smart contracts make sense with a blockchain because now humans can agree on specific contract behavior that is fixed due to the highly prescribed way a VM will process it. This doesn't mean that humans will or should blindly trust a smart contract to do what some third party claims it will do. But unlike meatspace, there is one VM that matters, contracts and oracles can earn a reputation as being trustworthy, and established patterns can be executed with incredible efficiency and fairness. The issue that presents a challenge for all systems (cryptocurrencies and meatspace institutions) is bootstrapping. Some people will get burned in the beginning because fraud will be temporarily easier to commit. This is why I wish the DAO had just been allowed to die without the hard fork. What is needed is not innovative crowd funding schemes, but additional trust and vetting infrastructure.
  - zdkl 9y ago
    Shame on whoever considers himself familiar with cryptocurrencies that downvoted this. This is a well worded argument for an opinion that one may or may not share, but whatever one's position about the "true believers" of smart contracts the parents points are valid, on topic and sensible. Btc isn't here to pay your coffee or your salary, it's here as a fallback if you really need to get out of traditional finance. Same with ETH. You're not supposed to switch all your banking, notarial or legal affairs to the platform but it's there for cases where traditional contract law isn't desirable. Now why so many people ascribed additional meaning or value to these platforms is the really interesting part. In a way, it's good these hacks happen as a reminder that this is what you signed up for. It's the wild west and you don't have a court or government watching your back. That's a (the) feature.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- bduerst 9y ago
  Yep, I've heard a few pitches involving bitcoin or blockchains that came across as a hammer pivoting in search of a nail.
grandalf 9y ago
> do things that are technically allowed, but have unexpected downsides Unexpected downsides for whom? Smart contracts cease to be smart if we have to rely not on the VM but on a small group of human overlords. If a smart contract exists and you don't know clearly how many times it has been used and what percentage of the parties who used it are pleased with its functioning, you really should not use it unless you feel comfortable personally reviewing the code.
- pdkl95 9y ago
  > personally reviewing the code. With the insane decision to use a Turing-complete language, the contract's behavior undecidable. You don't even know if the contract will halt. Limited "gas" (execution time) isn't the solution, because the lesson of the Halting Problem isn't that a program might not terminate. Even if the program halts within a finite time (or "gas"), the behavior of the program on the current input is still undecidable. Any serious attempt at writing "smart contracts" should demonstrate their understanding of the science of insecurity[1] and limit the contract language's complexity to deterministic context-free. [1] https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4763-en-the_science_of_insecurity https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4763-en-the_science_of_insecurit...
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > With the insane decision to use a Turing-complete language, the contract's behavior undecidable. OTOH, if the language isn't Turing-complete, there will almost certainly be things you'll want a contract to do that it can't. You can have generality or decidability, but not both.
    - grandalf 9y ago
      Right. It will take time, but eventually Solidity (or some other alternative smart contracts approach) will likely be very trustworthy and secure.
      - 1_player 9y ago
inopinatus 9y ago
I have heard of a similar system in which two opposing teams are formed and argue over technicalities of the language used in front of a lifetime appointee with no particular experience of the topic who will decide the outcome.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

bitJericho 9y ago

I see what you did there!

Pulcinella 9y ago

This is the central, glaring flaw in cryptocurrencies to me. Transferring "value" for goods and services is really more of a social problem than a scientific/engineering one. Money is a social technology that solves a social problem. Cryptocurrency is a engineering technology in search of a problem to solve.

grandalf 9y ago
> Transferring "value" for goods and services is really more of a social problem than a scientific/engineering one Do you mean on the margin where there is debate about the contract or whether the goods/services were rendered adequately? Cryptocurrencies don't attempt to solve this problem at all, they simply allow for efficient moving of currency between parties without the need for meatspace regulation/trust to do it. Smart contracts make sense with a blockchain because now humans can agree on specific contract behavior that is fixed due to the highly prescribed way a VM will process it. This doesn't mean that humans will or should blindly trust a smart contract to do what some third party claims it will do. But unlike meatspace, there is one VM that matters, contracts and oracles can earn a reputation as being trustworthy, and established patterns can be executed with incredible efficiency and fairness. The issue that presents a challenge for all systems (cryptocurrencies and meatspace institutions) is bootstrapping. Some people will get burned in the beginning because fraud will be temporarily easier to commit. This is why I wish the DAO had just been allowed to die without the hard fork. What is needed is not innovative crowd funding schemes, but additional trust and vetting infrastructure.
- zdkl 9y ago
  Shame on whoever considers himself familiar with cryptocurrencies that downvoted this. This is a well worded argument for an opinion that one may or may not share, but whatever one's position about the "true believers" of smart contracts the parents points are valid, on topic and sensible. Btc isn't here to pay your coffee or your salary, it's here as a fallback if you really need to get out of traditional finance. Same with ETH. You're not supposed to switch all your banking, notarial or legal affairs to the platform but it's there for cases where traditional contract law isn't desirable. Now why so many people ascribed additional meaning or value to these platforms is the really interesting part. In a way, it's good these hacks happen as a reminder that this is what you signed up for. It's the wild west and you don't have a court or government watching your back. That's a (the) feature.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
bduerst 9y ago
Yep, I've heard a few pitches involving bitcoin or blockchains that came across as a hammer pivoting in search of a nail.

grandalf 9y ago

> do things that are technically allowed, but have unexpected downsides Unexpected downsides for whom? Smart contracts cease to be smart if we have to rely not on the VM but on a small group of human overlords. If a smart contract exists and you don't know clearly how many times it has been used and what percentage of the parties who used it are pleased with its functioning, you really should not use it unless you feel comfortable personally reviewing the code.

pdkl95 9y ago
> personally reviewing the code. With the insane decision to use a Turing-complete language, the contract's behavior undecidable. You don't even know if the contract will halt. Limited "gas" (execution time) isn't the solution, because the lesson of the Halting Problem isn't that a program might not terminate. Even if the program halts within a finite time (or "gas"), the behavior of the program on the current input is still undecidable. Any serious attempt at writing "smart contracts" should demonstrate their understanding of the science of insecurity[1] and limit the contract language's complexity to deterministic context-free. [1] https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4763-en-the_science_of_insecurity https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4763-en-the_science_of_insecurit...
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > With the insane decision to use a Turing-complete language, the contract's behavior undecidable. OTOH, if the language isn't Turing-complete, there will almost certainly be things you'll want a contract to do that it can't. You can have generality or decidability, but not both.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    Right. It will take time, but eventually Solidity (or some other alternative smart contracts approach) will likely be very trustworthy and secure.
    - 1_player 9y ago

inopinatus 9y ago

I have heard of a similar system in which two opposing teams are formed and argue over technicalities of the language used in front of a lifetime appointee with no particular experience of the topic who will decide the outcome.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]