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One option today is Chainlink which uses a host of oracles to achieve distributed consensus on real-world prices, weather or other signals.

by lowkey 5y ago

mypastself 5y ago
And how would Chainlink prove that a particular side of a contract has, say, delivered a particular item or performed a particar service and the other party’s funds must be released?
- lowkey 5y ago
  Chainlink hasn’t solved for every external blockchain integration - I never claimed they did. Chainlink simply provides a distributed consensus mechanism for getting real world observations in a robust and difficult to manipulate way, onto a blockchain.
  - mypastself 5y ago
    It sounds to me like the technology doesn’t really replace lawyers with code, then. The one use case presented so far is a contract that relies on publicly available data arbitered by a majority of external sources, each of which is presumably inducted into the system by a trusted third party.
    - lowkey 5y ago
      Give it a chance. It may not replace every contract in every case but Ethereum in conjunction with Chainlink does address an increasing number of legacy contract use cases. This is a nascent technology and per the article, major structural transformations such as this may play out over 30 or more years. If you are genuinely curious I would suggest reading up on the details of how Chainlink works [1]. As you can see these are not trivial challenges and the solutions often require a bit of effort to understand. (Not claiming to be an expert, just an interested student) [1] https://chain.link/solutions https://chain.link/solutions
      - mypastself 5y ago
        I actually am curious about the entire crypto space, and I’ve been trying to get a good theoretical grounding. I find the tech fascinating and potentially valuable. But the majority of potential use cases so far, particularly those relating to applications beyond the strictly financial, seem to rely on flawed premises. The idea of oracles seems to go against the whole point of even using the blockchain. Perhaps Chainlink or any number of competitors will eventually resolve some of these issues, but I don’t think they’ve presented a convincing case yet. Or I just don’t quite understand it.
        lowkey 5y ago
        Fair enough. Chainlink’s solution to the consensus problem is to have a large number of independent sources of real-world data for any variable. This redundancy makes it difficult for a single or a few bad actors to collude to mis-quote. To your point though most of Chainlink’s current activity is tied to crypto-asset prices, not the broader use cases mentioned (such as weather oracles). I suspect this is due to the more lucrative short-term returns available from speculation vs other use cases. I love the potential of crypto but would like to see more real-world use-cases. I suspect they will come in time and that short-term speculation is the use case to drive adoption.
  - deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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One option today is Chainlink which uses a host of oracles to achieve distributed consensus on real-world prices, weather or other signals.

by lowkey 5y ago

One option today is Chainlink which uses a host of oracles to achieve distributed consensus on real-world prices, weather or other signals.

mypastself 5y ago

And how would Chainlink prove that a particular side of a contract has, say, delivered a particular item or performed a particar service and the other party’s funds must be released?

lowkey 5y ago
Chainlink hasn’t solved for every external blockchain integration - I never claimed they did. Chainlink simply provides a distributed consensus mechanism for getting real world observations in a robust and difficult to manipulate way, onto a blockchain.
- mypastself 5y ago
  It sounds to me like the technology doesn’t really replace lawyers with code, then. The one use case presented so far is a contract that relies on publicly available data arbitered by a majority of external sources, each of which is presumably inducted into the system by a trusted third party.
  - lowkey 5y ago
    Give it a chance. It may not replace every contract in every case but Ethereum in conjunction with Chainlink does address an increasing number of legacy contract use cases. This is a nascent technology and per the article, major structural transformations such as this may play out over 30 or more years. If you are genuinely curious I would suggest reading up on the details of how Chainlink works [1]. As you can see these are not trivial challenges and the solutions often require a bit of effort to understand. (Not claiming to be an expert, just an interested student) [1] https://chain.link/solutions https://chain.link/solutions
    - mypastself 5y ago
      I actually am curious about the entire crypto space, and I’ve been trying to get a good theoretical grounding. I find the tech fascinating and potentially valuable. But the majority of potential use cases so far, particularly those relating to applications beyond the strictly financial, seem to rely on flawed premises. The idea of oracles seems to go against the whole point of even using the blockchain. Perhaps Chainlink or any number of competitors will eventually resolve some of these issues, but I don’t think they’ve presented a convincing case yet. Or I just don’t quite understand it.
      - lowkey 5y ago
        Fair enough. Chainlink’s solution to the consensus problem is to have a large number of independent sources of real-world data for any variable. This redundancy makes it difficult for a single or a few bad actors to collude to mis-quote. To your point though most of Chainlink’s current activity is tied to crypto-asset prices, not the broader use cases mentioned (such as weather oracles). I suspect this is due to the more lucrative short-term returns available from speculation vs other use cases. I love the potential of crypto but would like to see more real-world use-cases. I suspect they will come in time and that short-term speculation is the use case to drive adoption.
- deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago

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