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All these schemes always still might need some higher authority in the end e.g. who decides when the work is done? Putting up collateral only ensures that someo

All these schemes always still might need some higher authority in the end e.g. who decides when the work is done? Putting up collateral only ensures that someone has the money, it does not ensure that one actually gets the money. Because defining when "the work" is done, can be really complicated in real life projects. Contracts in real life are complicated. Real life is messy etc.

throwaway405769 5y ago
> who decides when the work is done? This is part of the smart contract, which has to explicitly define the conditions on which the collateral is confiscated. Getting real life data reliably into the blockchain is hard, but there are different approaches to solve this.
- roberrrrrrt 5y ago
  The “different approaches to solve this” part, if it ever arrives, would be much more revolutionary than the blockchain itself.
  - throwaway405769 5y ago
    Aave has $11 billion deposited on it right now and safety of those funds depend completely on getting accurate price data to trigger liquidations. So you can say that the oracle problem is solved, at least for price data.
    - roberrrrrrt 5y ago
      Getting data in isn’t the big issue though, and we’ve had market data streams since forever. I’m talking about the example above, where a smart contract would need some way of knowing when to flip the “Bob has satisfactorily finished community refurbishment” flag. This would require an abundance of interoperable data sources for bizzare things. Where do I subscribe to the count(dogshit_pile_in_the_playground) stream, and who or what is publishing to it in a trust-less manner?
      - throwaway405769 5y ago
        Getting all the data in the world into the blockchain and coding smart contracts to infer judgement from it would be too complex and expensive. A more practical approach is to transfer the funds to Bob once he clicks on the checkbox and have some lock-up period, so that Alice has the opportunity to trigger a dispute if she needs to. Then the dispute can be resolved by a private court (composed of humans) that both Alice and Bob agreed on beforehand. See: https://kleros.io https://kleros.io
        roberrrrrrt 5y ago
        Ok, but this isn’t purely a smart contract anymore. You’re describing a typical escrow (running on a blockchain, because ______) with human judges, conceptually identical to what goes on behind the scenes at EBay. What necessitates a blockchain here?
        throwaway405769 5y ago
        No, it's running completely on smart contracts. You get the regular advantages of running on blockchain: permissionless and trustless access to finance. You don't have to trust the escrow holder, you don't have to worry about getting banned from Ebay.
        roberrrrrrt 5y ago
        > it's running completely on smart contracts The human judges/arbitrators aren’t, and they’re what’s critical. The contract cannot be sensibly completed without their input. So you have an escrow system where human judges need to supply critical information. I’m left having to trust the human judges, unsurprisingly. Running this basic escrow code on the blockchain means that I no longer have to trust the kind of basic escrow code that’s used in centralised escrows. My question now is whether the escrow code of centralised providers (if condition then funds.release()) is really so unreliable that I’ll get get tonnes of benefit using blockchain escrows. Whenever there’s controversy over escrows, it comes down to the arbitration, which as you admitted would still be performed by humans.
    - immibis 5y ago
      Price data is easy. Price data is already visible on the blockchain because a lot of trading happens on the blockchain.
fnoof 5y ago
I’d imagine they would, kind of like the levels of arbitrators and courts today. The article said the neighbours first vote that work is done. Most of the time that could work. But it also mentions the neighbours could collude to steal the collateral. In that case courts could get involved and force money be returned etc. I’m very far from a legal expert, but smart contracts seem like a potentially useful tool, within the current system. Not as a complete replacement.
- jgilias 5y ago
  > courts could get involved and force the money be returned So, it's the government enforcing the contract. EDIT: Just wanted to add that I actually completely agree with your last sentence!

throwaway405769 5y ago

> who decides when the work is done? This is part of the smart contract, which has to explicitly define the conditions on which the collateral is confiscated. Getting real life data reliably into the blockchain is hard, but there are different approaches to solve this.

roberrrrrrt 5y ago
The “different approaches to solve this” part, if it ever arrives, would be much more revolutionary than the blockchain itself.
- throwaway405769 5y ago
  Aave has $11 billion deposited on it right now and safety of those funds depend completely on getting accurate price data to trigger liquidations. So you can say that the oracle problem is solved, at least for price data.
  - roberrrrrrt 5y ago
    Getting data in isn’t the big issue though, and we’ve had market data streams since forever. I’m talking about the example above, where a smart contract would need some way of knowing when to flip the “Bob has satisfactorily finished community refurbishment” flag. This would require an abundance of interoperable data sources for bizzare things. Where do I subscribe to the count(dogshit_pile_in_the_playground) stream, and who or what is publishing to it in a trust-less manner?
    - throwaway405769 5y ago
      Getting all the data in the world into the blockchain and coding smart contracts to infer judgement from it would be too complex and expensive. A more practical approach is to transfer the funds to Bob once he clicks on the checkbox and have some lock-up period, so that Alice has the opportunity to trigger a dispute if she needs to. Then the dispute can be resolved by a private court (composed of humans) that both Alice and Bob agreed on beforehand. See: https://kleros.io https://kleros.io
      - roberrrrrrt 5y ago
        Ok, but this isn’t purely a smart contract anymore. You’re describing a typical escrow (running on a blockchain, because ______) with human judges, conceptually identical to what goes on behind the scenes at EBay. What necessitates a blockchain here?
        throwaway405769 5y ago
        No, it's running completely on smart contracts. You get the regular advantages of running on blockchain: permissionless and trustless access to finance. You don't have to trust the escrow holder, you don't have to worry about getting banned from Ebay.
        roberrrrrrt 5y ago
        > it's running completely on smart contracts The human judges/arbitrators aren’t, and they’re what’s critical. The contract cannot be sensibly completed without their input. So you have an escrow system where human judges need to supply critical information. I’m left having to trust the human judges, unsurprisingly. Running this basic escrow code on the blockchain means that I no longer have to trust the kind of basic escrow code that’s used in centralised escrows. My question now is whether the escrow code of centralised providers (if condition then funds.release()) is really so unreliable that I’ll get get tonnes of benefit using blockchain escrows. Whenever there’s controversy over escrows, it comes down to the arbitration, which as you admitted would still be performed by humans.
  - immibis 5y ago
    Price data is easy. Price data is already visible on the blockchain because a lot of trading happens on the blockchain.

fnoof 5y ago

I’d imagine they would, kind of like the levels of arbitrators and courts today. The article said the neighbours first vote that work is done. Most of the time that could work. But it also mentions the neighbours could collude to steal the collateral. In that case courts could get involved and force money be returned etc. I’m very far from a legal expert, but smart contracts seem like a potentially useful tool, within the current system. Not as a complete replacement.

jgilias 5y ago
> courts could get involved and force the money be returned So, it's the government enforcing the contract. EDIT: Just wanted to add that I actually completely agree with your last sentence!