4 ms·

That's like saying legal contracts are a disaster because we do not live in an ideal world where lawyers don't do mistakes, and there are no legal loopholes. G

That's like saying legal contracts are a disaster because we do not live in an ideal world where lawyers don't do mistakes, and there are no legal loopholes. Granted, bugs are much more common than legal loopholes, but in the same way an operating system's APIs and constraints are tested until it becomes reliable enough for other people to rely on it, I can see some standard types of contracts (in the same way as in the traditional legal system) becoming recognized for their robustness and used for common operations.

justusw 9y ago
One could argue that legal contracts are less binding than smart contracts. There is a distinction made between the 'letter and spirit of the law'. Furthermore, a contract, or at least a clause, will become invalid if it goes against existing law in a country (at least this applies to the EU). E.g, I cannot sign a contract in which I sell my kidney to you, as commercial organ trading is outlawed in many countries. Is a smart contract able to make this distinction? I suppose as soon as it develops a moral consciousness it does.
lindig 9y ago
Most "real life" contracts have bugs too. The difference is: the visibility of these contracts is very limited such that these bugs cannot be exploited by random hackers. And any exploit can be challenged in court. Ethereum takes away both - opening you up to be challenge by everybody with no recourse.
PeterisP 9y ago
Legal contracts have a solution for bugs and loopholes, namely, the court system. I can write a three-line contract with the core terms on a napkin, sign it, and it will be okay, since everything not explicitly mentioned will be given reasonable defaults, and attempts to exploit stupid loopholes will be laughed out of the court. If someone defrauds me and gets me to sign a contract based on false information, they don't get to point to a loophole and figuratively take my firstborn, we have a process to void fraudulent contracts. However, if you want contracts that cannot be overridden and are enforced by machines as written (not as intended, as in the legal system), then the bar becomes much higher, then you must get all the details explicitly right the first time and ensure that people don't sign fraudulent contracts, and I'm not sure if this is possible at all.
simias 9y ago
I think I'm going to end up pasting this link in all discussions surrounding Ethereum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law >When one obeys the letter of the law but not the spirit, one is obeying the literal interpretation of the words (the "letter") of the law, but not necessarily the intent of those who wrote the law. Conversely, when one obeys the spirit of the law but not the letter, one is doing what the authors of the law intended, though not necessarily adhering to the literal wording. This is a very ancient concept and like all ancient concepts it's bound to be rediscovered every other decade on average. "The code is law" is a wet dream for a dystopic authoritarian state and I don't understand why anybody, much less actual coders, would think that's a good idea. "Thank you for subscribing to our contract for your $2 weekly subscription. By the way through a clever loophole obfuscated in our code the amount actually doubles every week. Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Code is Law. Have a good day sir". In the real world you have a safety net for these types of things, in many case you can break an abusive contract because society has created regulations that ban certain tactics. Ethereum has no such thing. A single mistake or intentional deception and like that, you've lost all your money. The code is law, nothing we can do sir. How is that a feature exactly? Look at how dumb the average spam is, and yet there's no shortage of people falling for them. Yet it seems like the ethereum crowd genuinely believes that my mother is suddenly going to be able to proof Solidity scripts, something I wouldn't even trust myself to do with decades of programming experience behind me. I don't know if Ethereum is an economic bubble but it definitely is an intellectual one.
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  > "The code is law" is a wet dream for a dystopic authoritarian state and I don't understand why anybody, much less actual coders, would think that's a good idea. How is that dystopic and authoritarian? Looks like you're throwing a bunch of buzz words for shock value with little argument to back it up. We already trust code as contract everyday every time you make a payment through SSL (anyone who lived through the 90's and early 2000's remembers how people were scared to death of online payment security and now it happens every millisecond). Ethereum is just a distributed version of that with no middle man, that is to say it can fail like SSL can when compromised but it doesn't mean we should throw it out the window just because it could sometimes fail. By that logic we should still be cavemen and forget about any technology ever. > "Thank you for subscribing to our contract for your $2 weekly subscription. By the way through a clever loophole obfuscated in our code the amount actually doubles every week. " I hope you're aware that the exact same thing happened with these indexed loans where people weren't aware that interests could fluctuate with time, right?
omarforgotpwd 9y ago
Legal contracts are enforced by courts, which are run by humans. Humans do not take things 100% literally and there is always an opportunity to change the law. For example someone would not be forced to empty their entire bank account and give it to some random person just because that person discovered a typo in the EULA.

justusw 9y ago

One could argue that legal contracts are less binding than smart contracts. There is a distinction made between the 'letter and spirit of the law'. Furthermore, a contract, or at least a clause, will become invalid if it goes against existing law in a country (at least this applies to the EU). E.g, I cannot sign a contract in which I sell my kidney to you, as commercial organ trading is outlawed in many countries. Is a smart contract able to make this distinction? I suppose as soon as it develops a moral consciousness it does.

lindig 9y ago

Most "real life" contracts have bugs too. The difference is: the visibility of these contracts is very limited such that these bugs cannot be exploited by random hackers. And any exploit can be challenged in court. Ethereum takes away both - opening you up to be challenge by everybody with no recourse.

PeterisP 9y ago

Legal contracts have a solution for bugs and loopholes, namely, the court system. I can write a three-line contract with the core terms on a napkin, sign it, and it will be okay, since everything not explicitly mentioned will be given reasonable defaults, and attempts to exploit stupid loopholes will be laughed out of the court. If someone defrauds me and gets me to sign a contract based on false information, they don't get to point to a loophole and figuratively take my firstborn, we have a process to void fraudulent contracts. However, if you want contracts that cannot be overridden and are enforced by machines as written (not as intended, as in the legal system), then the bar becomes much higher, then you must get all the details explicitly right the first time and ensure that people don't sign fraudulent contracts, and I'm not sure if this is possible at all.

simias 9y ago

I think I'm going to end up pasting this link in all discussions surrounding Ethereum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law >When one obeys the letter of the law but not the spirit, one is obeying the literal interpretation of the words (the "letter") of the law, but not necessarily the intent of those who wrote the law. Conversely, when one obeys the spirit of the law but not the letter, one is doing what the authors of the law intended, though not necessarily adhering to the literal wording. This is a very ancient concept and like all ancient concepts it's bound to be rediscovered every other decade on average. "The code is law" is a wet dream for a dystopic authoritarian state and I don't understand why anybody, much less actual coders, would think that's a good idea. "Thank you for subscribing to our contract for your $2 weekly subscription. By the way through a clever loophole obfuscated in our code the amount actually doubles every week. Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Code is Law. Have a good day sir". In the real world you have a safety net for these types of things, in many case you can break an abusive contract because society has created regulations that ban certain tactics. Ethereum has no such thing. A single mistake or intentional deception and like that, you've lost all your money. The code is law, nothing we can do sir. How is that a feature exactly? Look at how dumb the average spam is, and yet there's no shortage of people falling for them. Yet it seems like the ethereum crowd genuinely believes that my mother is suddenly going to be able to proof Solidity scripts, something I wouldn't even trust myself to do with decades of programming experience behind me. I don't know if Ethereum is an economic bubble but it definitely is an intellectual one.

patrickaljord 9y ago
> "The code is law" is a wet dream for a dystopic authoritarian state and I don't understand why anybody, much less actual coders, would think that's a good idea. How is that dystopic and authoritarian? Looks like you're throwing a bunch of buzz words for shock value with little argument to back it up. We already trust code as contract everyday every time you make a payment through SSL (anyone who lived through the 90's and early 2000's remembers how people were scared to death of online payment security and now it happens every millisecond). Ethereum is just a distributed version of that with no middle man, that is to say it can fail like SSL can when compromised but it doesn't mean we should throw it out the window just because it could sometimes fail. By that logic we should still be cavemen and forget about any technology ever. > "Thank you for subscribing to our contract for your $2 weekly subscription. By the way through a clever loophole obfuscated in our code the amount actually doubles every week. " I hope you're aware that the exact same thing happened with these indexed loans where people weren't aware that interests could fluctuate with time, right?

omarforgotpwd 9y ago

Legal contracts are enforced by courts, which are run by humans. Humans do not take things 100% literally and there is always an opportunity to change the law. For example someone would not be forced to empty their entire bank account and give it to some random person just because that person discovered a typo in the EULA.