4 ms·

Not quite sure what you're saying, that you expect the DOJ to somehow overturn the judgements of smart contracts, with possibly anonymous participants or partic

Not quite sure what you're saying, that you expect the DOJ to somehow overturn the judgements of smart contracts, with possibly anonymous participants or participants outside of the DOJ's jurisdiction?

ceejayoz 5y ago
I think the point is more that if you owe $200M to someone, a court is unlikely to accept "it's irreversibly stuck in a smart contract" as an out.
- thebean11 5y ago
  Sure, I don't disagree with that. For example, defrauding someone with a smart contract obviously doesn't offer the scammer legal protections.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Who defines fraud if the contract is contested?
    - thebean11 5y ago
      Depends on which jurisdiction alleged fraud happens in. If the parties are anonymous or in "difficult" jurisdictions, it will be pretty difficult. Fraudulent or not, though, you have a pretty heavy layer of protection as the money has already been transferred, and that money is not easy (close to impossible) to freeze. Any reversal that happens will be necessarily by a threat outside the blockchain, as the governing body can't actually reverse the transaction. It's a second transaction.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - vkou 5y ago
      The courts.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  I am against smart contracts because we do not know how to write software in that way. I like how they sparked a formal verification Renaissance of sorts but that did not help much either unfortunately (if the premise is wrong, no amount of proof will save you anyway). However, if you let all parties review the smart contract (the source is on the chain, you can check it) and agree with it's workings and sign a 'human' contract saying you do agree and then it goes wrong, I think it should be an out. We do not have proper ways to sue for misbehaving software (it happens all the time but MSFT is climbing higher and higher): this is easier to verify but we are adults here: if you agree to put money in smart contracts, you should have verified the code. And if you think the code is flawed, do not put money: otherwise do not complain afterwards. It is not that hard.
  - Daishiman 5y ago
    > but we are adults here: if you agree to put money in smart contracts, you should have verified the code. And if you think the code is flawed, do not put money: otherwise do not complain afterwards. It is not that hard. That's not how it works. Courts generally operate by ambiguous standard of what reasonable people and reasonable experts can actually do given the state of technology. No reasonable software engineer can tell you that a piece of code is flawless. I don't think courts will agree on a system that has been shown through evidence to be highly flawed.
    - tluyben2 5y ago
      Sure, that will depend on the courts and specific case, as it seems it works exactly like this mostly. But if you inspected the code yourself and you put your money in anyway and it is gone, you might find that the court will not do anything at all. And who can you shout at then, the moon? I am saying that smart contracts are a special case: they are small pieces of code, if they have a bug, it usually causes major damage and, if they run on the eth chain etc and no one took public responsibility for deploying it, there is no one to sue. We have no way to write this type of bombs without flaws as you rightly say and because of the irrevocable damage and the lack of defendant in most cases, these contracts should not be used at all. There are already (many) cases like this, but if I write some software and put it in github, someone else deploys it and people die; that is simply not my fault: it is the deploying person. In normal situations, this is easy to find the defendant here: but on the chain, you won't be able to: anyone can deploy anything and you won't know who it was. So unless you to end open source software, you have no case against anyone.
- kevincox 5y ago
  Sure, but if you both sign a legal contract to obey the outcome of the smart contract then no one owes anything, because the smart contract says that the $200M is gone. Obviously this doesn't allow you get around laws such as warranties but I don't see why it can't be used if everyone agrees to it.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    In some cases, perhaps, but not all. Fraud, for example, isn't legal even if you have a cleverly crafted contract that uses wording tricks to technically be true. I would expect a court to take a dim view of a smart contract that has an obfuscated, non-obvious mechanism for someone to siphon off all the money in an undisclosed fashion. "Code is law", but so's "you can't defraud people".
    - SiliconAlley 5y ago
      Where’s the part where anybody defrauded anybody? This was clearly incompetence that benefited nobody (certainly the developers would rather not have TITAN implode and all of this USDC locked in a contract...). Embarrassing yes. Fraud? Pretty clearly no
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        It's an example of a scenario where you can't sign certain rights away. Not specific to TITAN.
      - lupire 5y ago
        How can it be "locked"? Can't they deploy a protocol update to the members of the compute pool?
        acjohnson55 5y ago
        Depends on how you write the contract. If you make a smart contract unilaterally updatable, then it's no longer decentralized and trustless, because people with admin rights can plunder it, or can be extorted, or compelled by authorities to turn over the capital.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ceejayoz 5y ago

I think the point is more that if you owe $200M to someone, a court is unlikely to accept "it's irreversibly stuck in a smart contract" as an out.

thebean11 5y ago
Sure, I don't disagree with that. For example, defrauding someone with a smart contract obviously doesn't offer the scammer legal protections.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Who defines fraud if the contract is contested?
  - thebean11 5y ago
    Depends on which jurisdiction alleged fraud happens in. If the parties are anonymous or in "difficult" jurisdictions, it will be pretty difficult. Fraudulent or not, though, you have a pretty heavy layer of protection as the money has already been transferred, and that money is not easy (close to impossible) to freeze. Any reversal that happens will be necessarily by a threat outside the blockchain, as the governing body can't actually reverse the transaction. It's a second transaction.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - vkou 5y ago
    The courts.
tluyben2 5y ago
I am against smart contracts because we do not know how to write software in that way. I like how they sparked a formal verification Renaissance of sorts but that did not help much either unfortunately (if the premise is wrong, no amount of proof will save you anyway). However, if you let all parties review the smart contract (the source is on the chain, you can check it) and agree with it's workings and sign a 'human' contract saying you do agree and then it goes wrong, I think it should be an out. We do not have proper ways to sue for misbehaving software (it happens all the time but MSFT is climbing higher and higher): this is easier to verify but we are adults here: if you agree to put money in smart contracts, you should have verified the code. And if you think the code is flawed, do not put money: otherwise do not complain afterwards. It is not that hard.
- Daishiman 5y ago
  > but we are adults here: if you agree to put money in smart contracts, you should have verified the code. And if you think the code is flawed, do not put money: otherwise do not complain afterwards. It is not that hard. That's not how it works. Courts generally operate by ambiguous standard of what reasonable people and reasonable experts can actually do given the state of technology. No reasonable software engineer can tell you that a piece of code is flawless. I don't think courts will agree on a system that has been shown through evidence to be highly flawed.
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    Sure, that will depend on the courts and specific case, as it seems it works exactly like this mostly. But if you inspected the code yourself and you put your money in anyway and it is gone, you might find that the court will not do anything at all. And who can you shout at then, the moon? I am saying that smart contracts are a special case: they are small pieces of code, if they have a bug, it usually causes major damage and, if they run on the eth chain etc and no one took public responsibility for deploying it, there is no one to sue. We have no way to write this type of bombs without flaws as you rightly say and because of the irrevocable damage and the lack of defendant in most cases, these contracts should not be used at all. There are already (many) cases like this, but if I write some software and put it in github, someone else deploys it and people die; that is simply not my fault: it is the deploying person. In normal situations, this is easy to find the defendant here: but on the chain, you won't be able to: anyone can deploy anything and you won't know who it was. So unless you to end open source software, you have no case against anyone.
kevincox 5y ago
Sure, but if you both sign a legal contract to obey the outcome of the smart contract then no one owes anything, because the smart contract says that the $200M is gone. Obviously this doesn't allow you get around laws such as warranties but I don't see why it can't be used if everyone agrees to it.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  In some cases, perhaps, but not all. Fraud, for example, isn't legal even if you have a cleverly crafted contract that uses wording tricks to technically be true. I would expect a court to take a dim view of a smart contract that has an obfuscated, non-obvious mechanism for someone to siphon off all the money in an undisclosed fashion. "Code is law", but so's "you can't defraud people".
  - SiliconAlley 5y ago
    Where’s the part where anybody defrauded anybody? This was clearly incompetence that benefited nobody (certainly the developers would rather not have TITAN implode and all of this USDC locked in a contract...). Embarrassing yes. Fraud? Pretty clearly no
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      It's an example of a scenario where you can't sign certain rights away. Not specific to TITAN.
    - lupire 5y ago
      How can it be "locked"? Can't they deploy a protocol update to the members of the compute pool?
      - acjohnson55 5y ago
        Depends on how you write the contract. If you make a smart contract unilaterally updatable, then it's no longer decentralized and trustless, because people with admin rights can plunder it, or can be extorted, or compelled by authorities to turn over the capital.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]