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The whole idea behind smart contracts that code can be law is fatally flawed, because it is a bet on our ability to write bug-free code. We know from experience

The whole idea behind smart contracts that code can be law is fatally flawed, because it is a bet on our ability to write bug-free code. We know from experience that this is virtually impossible, especially at large scale, even for the best people and organisations in the world. This means this ultimately require some form of human arbiter to decide in cases like that, but this ultimately defeats the entire purpose of smart contracts.

hardlianotion 8y ago
Quite. This is a live topic for me. Wiser heads pointed me toward https://medium.com/@jimmysong/the-truth-about-smart-contracts-ae825271811f https://medium.com/@jimmysong/the-truth-about-smart-contract... when I had my own blockchain moment. I think that immutability and lack of human judgement limit the usefulness of these things. And of course, not everything needs decentralised.
- vec 8y ago
  It's worse than that because immutability and lack of human judgement is also the killer feature that smart contracts offer over good old fashioned paper contracts and binding arbitration agreements. Any attempt to make maintaining smart contracts manageable is almost by definition going to undercut one of the main rationales for wanting to use them in the first place.
darawk 8y ago
> The whole idea behind smart contracts that code can be law is fatally flawed, because it is a bet on our ability to write bug-free code. We know from experience that this is virtually impossible, especially at large scale, even for the best people and organisations in the world. You mean, except for the cases where we do exactly that? Like mars rovers, space shuttles, medical devices, IOT, etc...
- wglb 8y ago
  Do you see blockchain developers doing the diligence that any random part of the space program does as a reflex?
  - darawk 8y ago
    Absolutely not. The state of blockchain development is shit. My point isn't that it's being done well. My point is that, in theory, it can be done well, and I believe that it can get there, and I think the end goal is worthwhile.
    - bkor 8y ago
      > My point is that, in theory, it can be done well, and I believe that it can get there, You really mean that eventually smart contracts can be reliable, no bugs, etc? I've seen procurement sign contracts with various unclear wordings in them. I've seen vendors wrongly apply contracts in their rates. It's quite common to have errors in real world contracts. I fail to see how a smart contract would work especially as it's even more complicated.
      - darawk 8y ago
        Smart contracts will not replace complex traditional contracts. They will replace simple ones, especially at first. There will be issues at first, for sure. Over time people will iterate on them and there will be a library of well vetted, well understood, standardized contracts. Also of note, smart contract does not necessarily mean no human intervention. A smart contract can appeal to an external and possibly human judge/arbitrator.
- daylightsavings 8y ago
  To assume those code bases don't contain bugs or go through multiple revisions and iterations is just naive. Just because bugs have not been exposed does not mean they are not present. Smart contracts have people actively snooping and trying to exploit bugs for gain. Oh, and they are publicly accessible. Also, IOT...pwned many times over ;)
  - darawk 8y ago
    > To assume those code bases don't contain bugs or go through multiple revisions and iterations is just naive. To assume smart contracts don't go through multiple revisions is equally naive. Now we're arguing about implementation, anyway, which is not the point. Implementation and best practices can be iterated on. The fact that the ecosystem isn't mature yet isn't an argument against getting it there.
    - vec 8y ago
      I think there's a difference between what you're saying (doing it right is possible) and what the critics are saying (doing it wrong needs to be impossible). There's nothing that best practices can do to prevent a motivated novice from throwing together a minimum effort contract that "works" by whatever test criteria they thought up over the past five minutes. Imagine surfing the web, but instead of showing a 500 error a broken page would withdraw a random sum from your checking account. It doesn't matter how good the best pages are, no one in their right mind would ever open a browser.
      - darawk 8y ago
        > I think there's a difference between what you're saying (doing it right is possible) and what the critics are saying (doing it wrong needs to be impossible). There's nothing that best practices can do to prevent a motivated novice from throwing together a minimum effort contract that "works" by whatever test criteria they thought up over the past five minutes. You're absolutely right. There's also nothing to prevent a motivated novice from writing software to control a mars rover. Just, nobody's going to send his rover to Mars. Nothing stops anyone from writing a smart contract, but common sense will (eventually, once the dust settles) stop people from throwing money at them.
- eric_h 8y ago
  a counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
- WalterBright 8y ago
  The rovers and shuttles have backup systems with different code in them specifically to deal with coding bugs. These fallback systems have also been repeated needed because of bugs in the shipped system.
  - darawk 8y ago
    You mean like how many smart contracts have reference implementations in other languages?
    - WalterBright 8y ago
      Being written in other languages is not sufficient. A different algorithm is needed.
      - darawk 8y ago
        I believe the idea is that you write the alternative reference implementation in a language that's easy to computationally reason about (e.g. Haskell) and then try to prove equivalence between your Solidity implementation and that one.
        WalterBright 8y ago
        If the algorithm has bugs (and they often do) using the same algorithm in different languages doesn't help.
        darawk 8y ago
        Sure, but in certain languages you can reason formally about them, and prove properties of them. It's not completely perfect, but particularly for relatively simple models you can get pretty high confidence in correctness, at least, up to certain invariance assumptions.
        WalterBright 8y ago

hardlianotion 8y ago

Quite. This is a live topic for me. Wiser heads pointed me toward https://medium.com/@jimmysong/the-truth-about-smart-contracts-ae825271811f https://medium.com/@jimmysong/the-truth-about-smart-contract... when I had my own blockchain moment. I think that immutability and lack of human judgement limit the usefulness of these things. And of course, not everything needs decentralised.

vec 8y ago
It's worse than that because immutability and lack of human judgement is also the killer feature that smart contracts offer over good old fashioned paper contracts and binding arbitration agreements. Any attempt to make maintaining smart contracts manageable is almost by definition going to undercut one of the main rationales for wanting to use them in the first place.

darawk 8y ago

> The whole idea behind smart contracts that code can be law is fatally flawed, because it is a bet on our ability to write bug-free code. We know from experience that this is virtually impossible, especially at large scale, even for the best people and organisations in the world. You mean, except for the cases where we do exactly that? Like mars rovers, space shuttles, medical devices, IOT, etc...

wglb 8y ago
Do you see blockchain developers doing the diligence that any random part of the space program does as a reflex?
- darawk 8y ago
  Absolutely not. The state of blockchain development is shit. My point isn't that it's being done well. My point is that, in theory, it can be done well, and I believe that it can get there, and I think the end goal is worthwhile.
  - bkor 8y ago
    > My point is that, in theory, it can be done well, and I believe that it can get there, You really mean that eventually smart contracts can be reliable, no bugs, etc? I've seen procurement sign contracts with various unclear wordings in them. I've seen vendors wrongly apply contracts in their rates. It's quite common to have errors in real world contracts. I fail to see how a smart contract would work especially as it's even more complicated.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Smart contracts will not replace complex traditional contracts. They will replace simple ones, especially at first. There will be issues at first, for sure. Over time people will iterate on them and there will be a library of well vetted, well understood, standardized contracts. Also of note, smart contract does not necessarily mean no human intervention. A smart contract can appeal to an external and possibly human judge/arbitrator.
daylightsavings 8y ago
To assume those code bases don't contain bugs or go through multiple revisions and iterations is just naive. Just because bugs have not been exposed does not mean they are not present. Smart contracts have people actively snooping and trying to exploit bugs for gain. Oh, and they are publicly accessible. Also, IOT...pwned many times over ;)
- darawk 8y ago
  > To assume those code bases don't contain bugs or go through multiple revisions and iterations is just naive. To assume smart contracts don't go through multiple revisions is equally naive. Now we're arguing about implementation, anyway, which is not the point. Implementation and best practices can be iterated on. The fact that the ecosystem isn't mature yet isn't an argument against getting it there.
  - vec 8y ago
    I think there's a difference between what you're saying (doing it right is possible) and what the critics are saying (doing it wrong needs to be impossible). There's nothing that best practices can do to prevent a motivated novice from throwing together a minimum effort contract that "works" by whatever test criteria they thought up over the past five minutes. Imagine surfing the web, but instead of showing a 500 error a broken page would withdraw a random sum from your checking account. It doesn't matter how good the best pages are, no one in their right mind would ever open a browser.
    - darawk 8y ago
      > I think there's a difference between what you're saying (doing it right is possible) and what the critics are saying (doing it wrong needs to be impossible). There's nothing that best practices can do to prevent a motivated novice from throwing together a minimum effort contract that "works" by whatever test criteria they thought up over the past five minutes. You're absolutely right. There's also nothing to prevent a motivated novice from writing software to control a mars rover. Just, nobody's going to send his rover to Mars. Nothing stops anyone from writing a smart contract, but common sense will (eventually, once the dust settles) stop people from throwing money at them.
eric_h 8y ago
a counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
WalterBright 8y ago
The rovers and shuttles have backup systems with different code in them specifically to deal with coding bugs. These fallback systems have also been repeated needed because of bugs in the shipped system.
- darawk 8y ago
  You mean like how many smart contracts have reference implementations in other languages?
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    Being written in other languages is not sufficient. A different algorithm is needed.
    - darawk 8y ago
      I believe the idea is that you write the alternative reference implementation in a language that's easy to computationally reason about (e.g. Haskell) and then try to prove equivalence between your Solidity implementation and that one.
      - WalterBright 8y ago
        If the algorithm has bugs (and they often do) using the same algorithm in different languages doesn't help.
        darawk 8y ago
        Sure, but in certain languages you can reason formally about them, and prove properties of them. It's not completely perfect, but particularly for relatively simple models you can get pretty high confidence in correctness, at least, up to certain invariance assumptions.
        WalterBright 8y ago