6 ms·

So the court can decide to transfer any assets at will, without the consent of anyone else on the blockchain?

by karpierz 5y ago

pfortuny 5y ago
Yep: in that case the State (the Judiciary, at least) owns everything. Exactly what bitcoin is against.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  That's part of the definition of the word "state". A polity that isn't the ultimate arbiter of ownership within its territory isn't a state.
ww520 5y ago
We as a society have entrusted upon the court system to sort out ownership of properties, so yes, the court can declare ownership. The court issuing a transaction is just like the court issuing a paper declaring a judgement. The consent of everyone on the blockchain only applies to the integrity of the transaction, i.e. yes, this transaction is issued from this particular wallet. That's it. No more. No less. Everyone on the blockchain consents that the transaction is indeed from the court's wallet, not from some random guy off the street. The court's wallet is a well known one and carries some authority. Once the question of ownership is contested again, everyone can trace it back to the court's issuing of the transaction.
- oblio 5y ago
  So you're saying that in this distributed ledger where we proof-of-stake and proof-of-work and proof-of-doge everything, there are some agents which are more special than other and we should trust them? Interesting.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Look it’s easy to nay-say. There must be something that connects the ledger to the real world and that something is going to have to be able to modify the ledger when the real world doesn’t match. Blockchains aren’t magic and can’t just query the state of the world without the help of people in meatspace. This is not a fixable problem. It’s just a question of who the somebody is. It’s why I think blockchain for IRL goods is pointless because whatever entity you have to trust to enforce the database constraints could just run the database without a blockchain.
  - cma 5y ago
    And each transaction gets to burn the equivalent of 10 gallons of gasoline instead of an atomic logged database transaction (which could even be published and cryptographically signed cheaply).
    - aftbit 5y ago
      It will certainly be better with Proof of Stake & sharding, but I was curious how bad it is today, so I looked it up. One ETH transaction consumes 86.94 kWh of energy. Wikipedia says gasoline has 8.83 kWh/l energy content, so it looks like about 10L of gasoline per transaction (not 10gal). Still, there are about 3.8L/gal, so if you factor in that heat engines are about 25% efficient, then you are right. What a crazy world we live in. https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption
      - cma 5y ago
        Bitcoin transactions have gone as high as 1200 kWh now. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
  - ww520 5y ago
    The wallets are the issuers of the transactions into the blockchain. The wallets can be used as the identification and representation of the real world entities. It's just like the court's stamp on a piece of paper carrying more weight than your and my stamps on a piece of paper.
didibus 5y ago
They'd have the consent of everyone to do it. The network controls the applicable laws, the court could be something defined by those laws with the authority to do this. It could be something where like: Any party in the chain of transaction (so anyone who used to own something) can use their key to initiate a "claim of wrongdoing". When doing so, the network could assign say 5 jury from a pool, and grant them the power to vote on "remediation". Now if the network started to feel like this became a means for abuse and loopholes, it could choose to modify the laws of the network to something else. Basically, at the end of the day, it works very similarly to a democratic society. But things are run and managed on the blockchain network instead of pen/paper and various other systems.
- SahAssar 5y ago
  Isn't the "vote on remediation" basically a trial? Isn't the jury you mentioned basically just a jury? "modify the laws of the network" is basically an election. It sounds like everything would be the same as it is now except in the case where everyone is honest and agree on the transaction which is a case that is somewhat simple in today's system. Why involve a blockchain in this at all? I'm all for efficiency in our systems and a lot of those systems would be better if more digitized but I don't get why people seem to think a blockchain magically solves some part of this.
  - karpierz 5y ago
    It's mob rule. If the majority believes that the transaction should be reversed, it will be. There are no laws. There is no constitution. Worse yet, your vote is directly proportional to your wealth. Or you allow for Sybil attacks.
  - didibus 5y ago
    The blockchain is just technology. It makes all this more convenient, and possibly scale better. But what people really argue for is that it makes the system much less prone to corruption and manipulation, because the system of tracking is much more resilient to being tempered with. For example, right now Joe Shmoe could fabricate a fake paper deed showing that his great grandma owned the Mona Lisa, and it is thus his. And then sue the French government saying they need to either buy it off him or return it to him. Now you'd need forensic experts and all to try and check the authenticity of that deed and all that. Now this is a bit of a stupid example obviously. What if the deed was real? Would the government still say well oh crap here you go? I guess that will depend on the French government and their laws. But say the laws of France were such that yes, it should indeed therefore be returned to Joe. Well with blockchain, the idea is that this wouldn't happen. First the "deed" would have never been lost, the ledger tells you who owns what, there'd be no confusion. Second, Joe (if he was lying), wouldn't be able to create a "fake" entry in the ledger as easily as maybe he can fabricate a deed. Now that's up for debate, but in theory a decentralized ledger need you to temper with all the nodes, so it's possibly much more difficult to scam with. And back to the example in the article, the Mona Lisa would be transfered from the government to Joe, there'd be a record of this. Now the question is no longer, is this record valid? We know this happened, the question becomes was this transaction initiated fradulently? Obviously the computer doesn't know why the transaction came to be, just that it for sure did, not tempered with, no fake claims, this did happen and we know exactly from where and to where, and exactly what was it that was transacted. Now you need people to investigate and asses if the transaction was fraudulent. Until there's a way for machines to with 100% accuracy read intent, this has to be handled by people. But in theory, a decentralized blockchain might make that process easier and more resilient to scams.
la_fayette 5y ago
If you use a smart contract and encode only certain actions what a court can do, under what circumstances it would work maybe. However, the smart contracts would grow into highly complex source code propably...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- intotheabyss 5y ago
  Maybe you should check out OpenLaw https://www.openlaw.io/ https://www.openlaw.io/

So the court can decide to transfer any assets at will, without the consent of anyone else on the blockchain?

pfortuny 5y ago

Yep: in that case the State (the Judiciary, at least) owns everything. Exactly what bitcoin is against.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago
That's part of the definition of the word "state". A polity that isn't the ultimate arbiter of ownership within its territory isn't a state.

ww520 5y ago

We as a society have entrusted upon the court system to sort out ownership of properties, so yes, the court can declare ownership. The court issuing a transaction is just like the court issuing a paper declaring a judgement. The consent of everyone on the blockchain only applies to the integrity of the transaction, i.e. yes, this transaction is issued from this particular wallet. That's it. No more. No less. Everyone on the blockchain consents that the transaction is indeed from the court's wallet, not from some random guy off the street. The court's wallet is a well known one and carries some authority. Once the question of ownership is contested again, everyone can trace it back to the court's issuing of the transaction.

oblio 5y ago
So you're saying that in this distributed ledger where we proof-of-stake and proof-of-work and proof-of-doge everything, there are some agents which are more special than other and we should trust them? Interesting.
- Spivak 5y ago
  Look it’s easy to nay-say. There must be something that connects the ledger to the real world and that something is going to have to be able to modify the ledger when the real world doesn’t match. Blockchains aren’t magic and can’t just query the state of the world without the help of people in meatspace. This is not a fixable problem. It’s just a question of who the somebody is. It’s why I think blockchain for IRL goods is pointless because whatever entity you have to trust to enforce the database constraints could just run the database without a blockchain.
- cma 5y ago
  And each transaction gets to burn the equivalent of 10 gallons of gasoline instead of an atomic logged database transaction (which could even be published and cryptographically signed cheaply).
  - aftbit 5y ago
    It will certainly be better with Proof of Stake & sharding, but I was curious how bad it is today, so I looked it up. One ETH transaction consumes 86.94 kWh of energy. Wikipedia says gasoline has 8.83 kWh/l energy content, so it looks like about 10L of gasoline per transaction (not 10gal). Still, there are about 3.8L/gal, so if you factor in that heat engines are about 25% efficient, then you are right. What a crazy world we live in. https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption
    - cma 5y ago
      Bitcoin transactions have gone as high as 1200 kWh now. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
- ww520 5y ago
  The wallets are the issuers of the transactions into the blockchain. The wallets can be used as the identification and representation of the real world entities. It's just like the court's stamp on a piece of paper carrying more weight than your and my stamps on a piece of paper.

didibus 5y ago

They'd have the consent of everyone to do it. The network controls the applicable laws, the court could be something defined by those laws with the authority to do this. It could be something where like: Any party in the chain of transaction (so anyone who used to own something) can use their key to initiate a "claim of wrongdoing". When doing so, the network could assign say 5 jury from a pool, and grant them the power to vote on "remediation". Now if the network started to feel like this became a means for abuse and loopholes, it could choose to modify the laws of the network to something else. Basically, at the end of the day, it works very similarly to a democratic society. But things are run and managed on the blockchain network instead of pen/paper and various other systems.

SahAssar 5y ago
Isn't the "vote on remediation" basically a trial? Isn't the jury you mentioned basically just a jury? "modify the laws of the network" is basically an election. It sounds like everything would be the same as it is now except in the case where everyone is honest and agree on the transaction which is a case that is somewhat simple in today's system. Why involve a blockchain in this at all? I'm all for efficiency in our systems and a lot of those systems would be better if more digitized but I don't get why people seem to think a blockchain magically solves some part of this.
- karpierz 5y ago
  It's mob rule. If the majority believes that the transaction should be reversed, it will be. There are no laws. There is no constitution. Worse yet, your vote is directly proportional to your wealth. Or you allow for Sybil attacks.
- didibus 5y ago
  The blockchain is just technology. It makes all this more convenient, and possibly scale better. But what people really argue for is that it makes the system much less prone to corruption and manipulation, because the system of tracking is much more resilient to being tempered with. For example, right now Joe Shmoe could fabricate a fake paper deed showing that his great grandma owned the Mona Lisa, and it is thus his. And then sue the French government saying they need to either buy it off him or return it to him. Now you'd need forensic experts and all to try and check the authenticity of that deed and all that. Now this is a bit of a stupid example obviously. What if the deed was real? Would the government still say well oh crap here you go? I guess that will depend on the French government and their laws. But say the laws of France were such that yes, it should indeed therefore be returned to Joe. Well with blockchain, the idea is that this wouldn't happen. First the "deed" would have never been lost, the ledger tells you who owns what, there'd be no confusion. Second, Joe (if he was lying), wouldn't be able to create a "fake" entry in the ledger as easily as maybe he can fabricate a deed. Now that's up for debate, but in theory a decentralized ledger need you to temper with all the nodes, so it's possibly much more difficult to scam with. And back to the example in the article, the Mona Lisa would be transfered from the government to Joe, there'd be a record of this. Now the question is no longer, is this record valid? We know this happened, the question becomes was this transaction initiated fradulently? Obviously the computer doesn't know why the transaction came to be, just that it for sure did, not tempered with, no fake claims, this did happen and we know exactly from where and to where, and exactly what was it that was transacted. Now you need people to investigate and asses if the transaction was fraudulent. Until there's a way for machines to with 100% accuracy read intent, this has to be handled by people. But in theory, a decentralized blockchain might make that process easier and more resilient to scams.

la_fayette 5y ago

If you use a smart contract and encode only certain actions what a court can do, under what circumstances it would work maybe. However, the smart contracts would grow into highly complex source code propably...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
intotheabyss 5y ago
Maybe you should check out OpenLaw https://www.openlaw.io/ https://www.openlaw.io/