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Almost all the trouble with a standard contract such as the house-painting example is establishing facts, such as "the work was done correctly and on time". And
by IAmEveryone 6y ago
Almost all the trouble with a standard contract such as the house-painting example is establishing facts, such as "the work was done correctly and on time". And smart contracts have absolutely no way to verify such facts automatically.
Nor are they remotely capable of capturing the multitude of possibilities the real world throws at courts. If, say, you agree a penalty for late completion, a judge will laugh you out of court if you provoke a delay by keeping the gate locked for a week.
That's one of unlimited possibilities, each of which has caveats of their own. It's neither possible to capture the space of possible outcomes in code, nor to match reality to whatever model you come up with.
- yakkomajuri 6y agoCompletely agree - but that wasn't the point. Standard contracts can't verify facts automatically either.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Completely agree - but that wasn't the point. No, it's a rebuttal to the point. > Standard contracts can't verify facts automatically either. Standard contracts don't pretend to automate the reactions to facts, and so don't need to verify facts automatically. That's why they rely on human action for execution and the legal system to verify and correct execution. That reliance is what smart contracts purport to fix, but if they can't verify facts automatically, they don't fix it.
- yakkomajuri 6y agoRight, I understand. You do have a point. However, while automation might be presented as a benefit of smart contracts (as one of my paragraphs indeed mentions), I believe the greater benefit comes from the transparency and deterministic execution. We are definitely not there yet when it comes to land registries, but DeFi now has billions locked away in contracts that are updating and reacting automatically to trades, loans, bets, purchases, etc, which is a good start.