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What I'd greatly appreciate is a walk through of a plausible real world use case. I find it hard to concentrate on the technology itself until I understand the

What I'd greatly appreciate is a walk through of a plausible real world use case. I find it hard to concentrate on the technology itself until I understand the application.

decentralised 9y ago
Crowdfunding (ICOs) is a use case. DNS (ENS) is a use case. Organisational Transparency (Aragon) is a use case. Prediction Markets(Augur) are a use case. Electricity Markets (Grid+) are a use case. International payment card with zero fees (TenX) is a use case. I can go on for a while longer, there are hundreds of use cases but the question is: what would be a use case for you?
- scandox 9y ago
  They all sound great. So what I'd love to see is a well written blog post describing how Ethereum would be put to work to achieve one of those goals and to give me an understanding of its superiority within the domain. I'm not demanding it and I'm not being snarky at all. It's just that's the level I'm at - without that kind of entry point I struggle to assess it.
  - _red 9y ago
    Some of the use cases can be fairly simple (thus easier to see the value). 1. Me and You start a company together. We would like to split things 50/50. We setup an address such that when values are paid to it, half goes to you, half goes to me. Effectively we've created an "LLC with an Operating Agreement", but we aren't relying on political legal system / country to enforce. Enforcement is automatic and done by the network. 2. You want to setup a Trust for your kids. You create a contract that holds 10 Bitcoin / Etherum / etc. On the date Jan 1, 2035 the value of that address will be forwarded to your child's address. Again, we created a "Non-Revokable Trust" that is network enforced. No need for probate, courts, trustees, etc.
    - scandox 9y ago
      Those are both really interesting thanks. I assume in case 2 Solidity language has some built-in mechanisms for ensuring that the current datetime is agreed across the whole network?
      - DennisP 9y ago
        Yes, every block includes a timestamp so everyone is forced to agree, and nodes won't forward a block if the time is too inaccurate. Miners have some leeway to manipulate time a bit, so you wouldn't want to use the block's timestamp as a random seed for a lottery, but just using it as a coarse deadline works fine.
      - _red 9y ago
        As DennisP said, yes there are mechanisms to ensure date is agreed upon. Your question of "consensus" brings up other interesting points. I think an increasingly valuable service in a new smart-contract world will be to have an "Outcomes As A Service" arbiter. This would be a trusted 3rd party that publishes real-world outcomes in a method that can be accessed reliably via smart contracts. Who will win the football game between Dallas and New Orleans on Nov 22, 2019? Who is winner of 2020 Presidential Election? etc....Essentially a service that you can tell them you want to track some real-world event and publish outcome for use in smart-contracts. Obviously this 3rd party would need to be transparent, have an open appeal process, be neutral and earning income not tied to outcome, etc. What happens to gaming laws (and cities like Las Vegas), in a world where sports betting can be done with no middle-man needed?
        AlphaWeaver 9y ago
        Services like Oracleize already allow you to do something similar to this.
        edf13 9y ago
        This is the main problem I see with smart contracts (Even with oracles?)... How do the nodes running the code all get the same response from an external data source? Even if they use a service such as oraclize if the contract calls https://api/query?param1 https://api/query?param1 and it returns lets say the weather: Node1 gets: 15.2c Node2 gets: 15.3c We've already failed on consensus haven't we?
  - decentralised 9y ago
    Ok, maybe you'll like this article: http://linkedin.com/pulse/ethereum-machinery-change-joaquim-pedro-antunes/ http://linkedin.com/pulse/ethereum-machinery-change-joaquim-...
    - scandox 9y ago
      I have to confess I don't like that article. I admit part of that is merely aesthetic...but principally it doesn't allow me to grapple with examples that are rooted in the now. To give you an example of what I mean: when Bluetooth was in its early days everybody kept repeating this stuff about your Fridge being able to talk to your Toaster. They wrote imaginative articles about Toasters that told Breadbins they had just toasted the last two slices of bread or whatever. This didn't help me at all to understand a perfectly good technology. It was, frankly, distracting BS. If someone had said you could have headphones without wires (and perhaps they did) I would have gone: Ah hah! Now that may show you the hard limits of my technological imagination...but to me that's the kind of the thing that sells a new technology. I think simple examples of things we currently need to do, with practical examples of how we can do them a different way is what helps me to understand things.
  - DennisP 9y ago
    On ethereum.org there are several tutorials, including making your own token and doing a crowdsale. The Solidity docs have tutorials for voting and auctions: https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/solidity-by-example.html https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/solidity-by-examp... And I've got various simple ideas with code at my blog: http://www.blunderingcode.com/ http://www.blunderingcode.com/
  - baby 9y ago
    The superiority is always going to be the same: you don’t have to trust a third party anymore.
- retube 9y ago
  yes but any of that stuff can be accomplished with conventional databases and software stacks. What specific problem with respect to implementing any of the above is blockchain solving that conventional stacks can't?
  - Slartie 9y ago
    You could argue that ICO-style crowdfunding is the only one of these problems that's currently not solvable in any other way, purely because it's impossible to get other people to invest obscene amounts of money into dubious projects if you don't have the ability to easily give them "tokens" of some kind in return that they can hope for to increase in value, regardless of whether the tokens are useful for their advertised purpose or not. This "problem" (which is kind of an euphemism, you could just call it "scamming") is not solvable without having a blockchain as a neutral entity that secures the tokens in question. Just giving people the same essentially-worthless "fantasy tokens" stored in a conventional database that you promise to maintain will not cut it, as people won't give you hundreds of millions in this case, but will readily do so once your tokens are on a blockchain.
  - and0 9y ago
    This is what I'm waiting for someone to explain. It's the same with blockchain, though. It's all a very neat concept, but it doesn't solve anything real-world except to power Bitcoin. Smart contracts just sound like... normal contracts. Like the ones that have been around in some form or another for millennia. Most contracts are just "if X then Y" but using legal lingo instead of code.
- alasdair_ 9y ago
  >Prediction Markets(Augur) are a use case The difficult part about something like a prediction market is that it's hard to get an authoritative source for the result. How can you prevent a fake result being sent out, for example?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cygned 9y ago
I know that one of the major power companies in Germany works on chargers for electric cars based on Ethereum; send x ether to the smart contact and the charging station will let you charge your car accordingly.
- joosters 9y ago
  What bit of that needs a smart contract? Seems perfectly do-able without one, and you still need the same levels of trust even when there's a smart contract in there.
  - nextos 9y ago
    I think the idea of Ethereum is that all infrastructure is there, so with a very thin layer (a smart contract) you get everything else (distributed computing, payments, crypto, even storage) for free.
  - cygned 9y ago
    The smart contract is the tool to make sure* that transferred Ether results in power being transferred. Of course we could just use a blockchain like Bitcoin and define "send x BTC to wallet y and I promise you will get your power" - but in that case, the blockchain can just guarantee the value transfer, not the subsequent actions being undertaken. * since this involves interaction with the outside world, I don't know a way at this point that 100% guarantees that your get your power. Curious how they tackle this.
    - tlrobinson 9y ago
      This seems like a perfect use-case for payment channels, e.x. Lightning Network: Car continuously delivers micropayments to charger while charger continuously delivers power to car, if one stops the other also stops. If the power is cut off prematurely the car only loses maybe a couple cents worth of power. (Payment channels are built using smart contracts, but they’re simple enough that Bitcoin’s more limited smart contracts can do it)
cgh 9y ago
Having recently gone through the prolonged pain of probating a will, I think smart contracts could be used to enforce wills without the need for probate. But of course, that opens up its own can of worms, like the need for potential heirs to maintain a digital identity for possibly decades. What happens if someone cuts all digital ties and effectively becomes a hermit? At least with ordinary probate, you can simply visit them in person and hand them some papers to read and sign. So maybe it's not such a great idea after all.
- rthomas6 9y ago
  Paper wallets, maybe?
- KallDrexx 9y ago
  Wills usually change many times in your lifetime, and with a smart contract you'd have to build in safe void clauses that can't be exploited.
- diab0lic 9y ago
  It also has the hard limit that the assets being willed must be crypto currency. It wouldn't work for a house, car, cash, etc...
bjaanes 9y ago
I completely understand that. I answered more or less the same question on Reddit yesterday and I hope it can bring some value here too: In the same way that Bitcoin allows people to send money to each other without having to trust the other person, you can do computation without having to trust a centralized party to do that computation. And it doesn't have to be "computing" in the way you might think about it; it can be tracking, storing and securing information (generally a hash of that information) with some logic around it (who can append, payments, vote on things, etc.). I wrote a blog post about some potential use cases. Most of which are realized only with smart contracts. Some are pretty "out there," but in the end it up to the innovators of the world to decide what we can or cannot do with this. http://www.gjermundbjaanes.com/the-blockchain-innovation-part-2-what-can-blockchain-solve/ http://www.gjermundbjaanes.com/the-blockchain-innovation-par...
corruptbytes 9y ago
My mom works for Mercedes and she's been telling me (She's really tech-y) they really wanna use Blockchain/Smart contracts to help validate someone before they purchase a car. Essentially before you buy a car, you need to verify you have the credit, cash, etc.. whatnot. She says that Diamler/Mercedes think they could make this a lot smoother with smart contracts and what not.
- golergka 9y ago
  Would it be used for an internal system, or for contacting credit score companies, banks, etc?
  - corruptbytes 9y ago
    I believe internal for dealerships to use. Again, she's not very tech-y so I'm not entirely sure.
- corruptbytes 9y ago
  *she's really NOT tech-y, my mistake
bmm6o 9y ago
Ransomware that is guaranteed to release the encryption key when the ransom is paid.

What I'd greatly appreciate is a walk through of a plausible real world use case. I find it hard to concentrate on the technology itself until I understand the application.

decentralised 9y ago

Crowdfunding (ICOs) is a use case. DNS (ENS) is a use case. Organisational Transparency (Aragon) is a use case. Prediction Markets(Augur) are a use case. Electricity Markets (Grid+) are a use case. International payment card with zero fees (TenX) is a use case. I can go on for a while longer, there are hundreds of use cases but the question is: what would be a use case for you?

scandox 9y ago
They all sound great. So what I'd love to see is a well written blog post describing how Ethereum would be put to work to achieve one of those goals and to give me an understanding of its superiority within the domain. I'm not demanding it and I'm not being snarky at all. It's just that's the level I'm at - without that kind of entry point I struggle to assess it.
- _red 9y ago
  Some of the use cases can be fairly simple (thus easier to see the value). 1. Me and You start a company together. We would like to split things 50/50. We setup an address such that when values are paid to it, half goes to you, half goes to me. Effectively we've created an "LLC with an Operating Agreement", but we aren't relying on political legal system / country to enforce. Enforcement is automatic and done by the network. 2. You want to setup a Trust for your kids. You create a contract that holds 10 Bitcoin / Etherum / etc. On the date Jan 1, 2035 the value of that address will be forwarded to your child's address. Again, we created a "Non-Revokable Trust" that is network enforced. No need for probate, courts, trustees, etc.
  - scandox 9y ago
    Those are both really interesting thanks. I assume in case 2 Solidity language has some built-in mechanisms for ensuring that the current datetime is agreed across the whole network?
    - DennisP 9y ago
      Yes, every block includes a timestamp so everyone is forced to agree, and nodes won't forward a block if the time is too inaccurate. Miners have some leeway to manipulate time a bit, so you wouldn't want to use the block's timestamp as a random seed for a lottery, but just using it as a coarse deadline works fine.
    - _red 9y ago
      As DennisP said, yes there are mechanisms to ensure date is agreed upon. Your question of "consensus" brings up other interesting points. I think an increasingly valuable service in a new smart-contract world will be to have an "Outcomes As A Service" arbiter. This would be a trusted 3rd party that publishes real-world outcomes in a method that can be accessed reliably via smart contracts. Who will win the football game between Dallas and New Orleans on Nov 22, 2019? Who is winner of 2020 Presidential Election? etc....Essentially a service that you can tell them you want to track some real-world event and publish outcome for use in smart-contracts. Obviously this 3rd party would need to be transparent, have an open appeal process, be neutral and earning income not tied to outcome, etc. What happens to gaming laws (and cities like Las Vegas), in a world where sports betting can be done with no middle-man needed?
      - AlphaWeaver 9y ago
        Services like Oracleize already allow you to do something similar to this.
      - edf13 9y ago
        This is the main problem I see with smart contracts (Even with oracles?)... How do the nodes running the code all get the same response from an external data source? Even if they use a service such as oraclize if the contract calls https://api/query?param1 https://api/query?param1 and it returns lets say the weather: Node1 gets: 15.2c Node2 gets: 15.3c We've already failed on consensus haven't we?
- decentralised 9y ago
  Ok, maybe you'll like this article: http://linkedin.com/pulse/ethereum-machinery-change-joaquim-pedro-antunes/ http://linkedin.com/pulse/ethereum-machinery-change-joaquim-...
  - scandox 9y ago
    I have to confess I don't like that article. I admit part of that is merely aesthetic...but principally it doesn't allow me to grapple with examples that are rooted in the now. To give you an example of what I mean: when Bluetooth was in its early days everybody kept repeating this stuff about your Fridge being able to talk to your Toaster. They wrote imaginative articles about Toasters that told Breadbins they had just toasted the last two slices of bread or whatever. This didn't help me at all to understand a perfectly good technology. It was, frankly, distracting BS. If someone had said you could have headphones without wires (and perhaps they did) I would have gone: Ah hah! Now that may show you the hard limits of my technological imagination...but to me that's the kind of the thing that sells a new technology. I think simple examples of things we currently need to do, with practical examples of how we can do them a different way is what helps me to understand things.
- DennisP 9y ago
  On ethereum.org there are several tutorials, including making your own token and doing a crowdsale. The Solidity docs have tutorials for voting and auctions: https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/solidity-by-example.html https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/solidity-by-examp... And I've got various simple ideas with code at my blog: http://www.blunderingcode.com/ http://www.blunderingcode.com/
- baby 9y ago
  The superiority is always going to be the same: you don’t have to trust a third party anymore.
retube 9y ago
yes but any of that stuff can be accomplished with conventional databases and software stacks. What specific problem with respect to implementing any of the above is blockchain solving that conventional stacks can't?
- Slartie 9y ago
  You could argue that ICO-style crowdfunding is the only one of these problems that's currently not solvable in any other way, purely because it's impossible to get other people to invest obscene amounts of money into dubious projects if you don't have the ability to easily give them "tokens" of some kind in return that they can hope for to increase in value, regardless of whether the tokens are useful for their advertised purpose or not. This "problem" (which is kind of an euphemism, you could just call it "scamming") is not solvable without having a blockchain as a neutral entity that secures the tokens in question. Just giving people the same essentially-worthless "fantasy tokens" stored in a conventional database that you promise to maintain will not cut it, as people won't give you hundreds of millions in this case, but will readily do so once your tokens are on a blockchain.
- and0 9y ago
  This is what I'm waiting for someone to explain. It's the same with blockchain, though. It's all a very neat concept, but it doesn't solve anything real-world except to power Bitcoin. Smart contracts just sound like... normal contracts. Like the ones that have been around in some form or another for millennia. Most contracts are just "if X then Y" but using legal lingo instead of code.
alasdair_ 9y ago
>Prediction Markets(Augur) are a use case The difficult part about something like a prediction market is that it's hard to get an authoritative source for the result. How can you prevent a fake result being sent out, for example?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cygned 9y ago

I know that one of the major power companies in Germany works on chargers for electric cars based on Ethereum; send x ether to the smart contact and the charging station will let you charge your car accordingly.

joosters 9y ago
What bit of that needs a smart contract? Seems perfectly do-able without one, and you still need the same levels of trust even when there's a smart contract in there.
- nextos 9y ago
  I think the idea of Ethereum is that all infrastructure is there, so with a very thin layer (a smart contract) you get everything else (distributed computing, payments, crypto, even storage) for free.
- cygned 9y ago
  The smart contract is the tool to make sure* that transferred Ether results in power being transferred. Of course we could just use a blockchain like Bitcoin and define "send x BTC to wallet y and I promise you will get your power" - but in that case, the blockchain can just guarantee the value transfer, not the subsequent actions being undertaken. * since this involves interaction with the outside world, I don't know a way at this point that 100% guarantees that your get your power. Curious how they tackle this.
  - tlrobinson 9y ago
    This seems like a perfect use-case for payment channels, e.x. Lightning Network: Car continuously delivers micropayments to charger while charger continuously delivers power to car, if one stops the other also stops. If the power is cut off prematurely the car only loses maybe a couple cents worth of power. (Payment channels are built using smart contracts, but they’re simple enough that Bitcoin’s more limited smart contracts can do it)

cgh 9y ago

Having recently gone through the prolonged pain of probating a will, I think smart contracts could be used to enforce wills without the need for probate. But of course, that opens up its own can of worms, like the need for potential heirs to maintain a digital identity for possibly decades. What happens if someone cuts all digital ties and effectively becomes a hermit? At least with ordinary probate, you can simply visit them in person and hand them some papers to read and sign. So maybe it's not such a great idea after all.

rthomas6 9y ago
Paper wallets, maybe?
KallDrexx 9y ago
Wills usually change many times in your lifetime, and with a smart contract you'd have to build in safe void clauses that can't be exploited.
diab0lic 9y ago
It also has the hard limit that the assets being willed must be crypto currency. It wouldn't work for a house, car, cash, etc...

bjaanes 9y ago

I completely understand that. I answered more or less the same question on Reddit yesterday and I hope it can bring some value here too: In the same way that Bitcoin allows people to send money to each other without having to trust the other person, you can do computation without having to trust a centralized party to do that computation. And it doesn't have to be "computing" in the way you might think about it; it can be tracking, storing and securing information (generally a hash of that information) with some logic around it (who can append, payments, vote on things, etc.). I wrote a blog post about some potential use cases. Most of which are realized only with smart contracts. Some are pretty "out there," but in the end it up to the innovators of the world to decide what we can or cannot do with this. http://www.gjermundbjaanes.com/the-blockchain-innovation-part-2-what-can-blockchain-solve/ http://www.gjermundbjaanes.com/the-blockchain-innovation-par...

corruptbytes 9y ago

My mom works for Mercedes and she's been telling me (She's really tech-y) they really wanna use Blockchain/Smart contracts to help validate someone before they purchase a car. Essentially before you buy a car, you need to verify you have the credit, cash, etc.. whatnot. She says that Diamler/Mercedes think they could make this a lot smoother with smart contracts and what not.

golergka 9y ago
Would it be used for an internal system, or for contacting credit score companies, banks, etc?
- corruptbytes 9y ago
  I believe internal for dealerships to use. Again, she's not very tech-y so I'm not entirely sure.
corruptbytes 9y ago
*she's really NOT tech-y, my mistake

bmm6o 9y ago

Ransomware that is guaranteed to release the encryption key when the ransom is paid.