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This happens surprisingly often when reasoning about blockchains: you start with some concern and follow the trail of logic to some form of necessary centraliza
by sp527 9y ago
This happens surprisingly often when reasoning about blockchains: you start with some concern and follow the trail of logic to some form of necessary centralization.
For example, when someone on Twitter raised the problem of collaterizing smart contracts (no one is going to lock capital away in extended escrow, which creates an obvious enforceability problem), Naval Ravikant argued in response that a third party guarantor would be necessary. As far as I can tell, he didn't recognize the irony in his own statement.
- klank 9y agoA third party guarantor is different from THE third party guarantor though, no? I only follow blockchain/ICO events from the peripheries so I'm sorry if I'm grossly misunderstanding.
- sp527 9y agoThe problem is trust: why would anyone trust anything other than THE third party guarantor, who has enough available capital and an established reputation for providing recourse? Would you ever trust some random, small-time agent to collaterize a smart contract you're involved in? That's obviously foolish. Even trusting a mid-size agent is foolish. You don't know how these people are operating, and whether they might go insolvent the very next day. This is one of the primary reasons we have large, regulated, centralized institutions in the first place.