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Adding on to that. If you need real life contracts (the law) to enforce consequences of breaching or exploiting a smart contract: why do you need a smart contra
by leifg 5y ago
Adding on to that. If you need real life contracts (the law) to enforce consequences of breaching or exploiting a smart contract: why do you need a smart contract at all?
- dylkil 5y agoWhether the law to enforce consequences exists or not, smart contracts will still provide value. Some of those contracts will be exploited, and the law will not help in 99% of cases.
- leifg 5y agoDo you care to elaborate on that? How does it add value?
- dylkil 5y agoDo you not think permissionless money systems are valuable?
- leifg 5y agoAre you talking about cryptocurrencies? If so, what does that have to do with smart contracts?
- dylkil 5y agoWhat do you think smart contracts are?
- leifg 5y agoWell according to this article it's code that is executed once a requirement is met. If the requirement is trivial like in the Bitcoin blockchain, sure, maybe there is some value in it. But no one in the comments is talking about that. What everyone here seems to be talking about is non-trivial code that is supposed to enforce policies. Or at least that's what I'm asking about. Where is the value in that?
- seibelj 5y agoUniswap facilitates trading through smart contracts without a trusted middleman or custodian. That is an example of useful smart contracts.
- dylkil 5y agoI think they are confused about what a smart contract is
- leifg 5y agoIt seems like you're the only one who actually knows what a smart contract is... As smart contracts are supposedly open source, it will probably trivial for you to link to a code snippet that qualifies as a smart contract. Can you do that? Otherwise, stop trolling.
- the_local_host 5y agoIndeed. It seems redundant if smart contracts are just another expression of the “real”, legally enforceable contract. When not implement it in legalese directly and eliminate the possibility of a scam in the code?
- NovemberWhiskey 5y agoIsn't the point that the smart contract is self-executing? The fact that third parties can meddle with it if it's poorly implemented is somewhat orthogonal. Most contract disputes are about disagreements between the parties, not about how the contract just became impossible because a cat burglar stole the property that was the subject matter of the contract.
- the_local_host 5y agoI don't think it's orthogonal; no traditional contract actually facilitates the burglary, whereas poorly-implemented smart contracts do. If the "real" contract is the one enforced by law, and the "smart" contract is the one that might facilitate a burglary, why not dispense with the latter?
- PeterisP 5y agoIf the "smart" contract resolves settlements automatically most of the time and most of the disputes get resolved without escalating to the actual legal process (which is relatively expensive and slow) then that can save some money. I would treat it essentially as arbitration on steroids; just as in arbitration, you make up an alternative process for deciding who pays whom and how disputes are resolved, so that in most cases you can use the alternate process, however, in unusual cases or boundary cases or outright fraud by one party you can escalate to the full legal system.