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People keep claiming over and over that you'd not lose money like this with (non-smart) contracts because the court would always rule your way. That's absurd. I

People keep claiming over and over that you'd not lose money like this with (non-smart) contracts because the court would always rule your way. That's absurd. If you went around making the kind of contract-of-adhesion offers to the general public that smart contracts represent, you're not likely to get the benefit of the doubt in court. And if you had a lawyer as incompetent as the devs writing these contracts, you'd have plenty of errors. I want to be clear: the devs aren't incompetent because errors exist; they're incompetent because they're incompetent. I hang out in programming help spaces for devs of varying skills, and 100% of the crypto questions come in on the lowest skill help channels with the most basic questions. It's often opined that programmer skill isn't a real thing. Well, such beliefs have consequences.

thomascgalvin 4y ago
> People keep claiming over and over that you'd not lose money like this with (non-smart) contracts because the court would always rule your way. I don't think anyone is claiming that the court would always rule your way; that's a strawman. Courts do stupid shit all the time. The point is that a court could rule in your favor. With something like this, what's the remedy? How is a court going to order some developer to undo a transaction posted to an immutable ledger? What do you do when the source of truth is wrong, and cannot be altered?
- erulabs 4y ago
  Agreed the original post was a bit of a straw man but now we’re just weighing risks. If a court can make a stupid decision with someone’s assets then it flows both ways: a court can take as well as return. So yes crypto fails to be recoverable by a court - but that’s obviously offset by being difficult to be stolen by a court too. The fact that most western countries don’t wholesale steal from their citizens means it’s easy to discount this benefit in the face of this cost.
wpietri 4y ago
> People keep claiming over and over that you'd not lose money like this with (non-smart) contracts because the court would always rule your way. If people do it that much, surely you could give us links to 3 or 4 of them? I'm interested, as I've never seen anybody claim that.
specialp 4y ago
I don't think any "people" are claiming it will ALWAYS go your way, and if they are they are wrong. The point is at least you have a shot at some sort of remediation. You can appeal to courts and work it out. Sometimes there can be an error so egregious that you end up losing your money. But in general the intent of a contract is strongly considered with human decisions. Computers have no concept of intent. Yes incompetence is everywhere, but how often does one messed up line lose millions of dollars? Even skilled developers make mistakes. We saw it at the very dawn of smart contracts with the DAO being broken, and Ethereum forking which blew up the "irreversabilty feature", and showed that there is great potential for a contract to be not what was intended. With crypto if the cryptography is secure you have absolutely zero recourse to get your money back. Ever. One of the selling points of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts is the non reversibility/mutability of them. However it has been shown many times that that causes harm more often then it has benefit. Loads of assets have been stolen/lost/rendered irrecoverable. In this case ALL parties would agree that it is definitely not was desired when they went into the contract so it would not even have to go to mediation. They could simply write a new contract rendering the other void in the non crypto world.

thomascgalvin 4y ago

> People keep claiming over and over that you'd not lose money like this with (non-smart) contracts because the court would always rule your way. I don't think anyone is claiming that the court would always rule your way; that's a strawman. Courts do stupid shit all the time. The point is that a court could rule in your favor. With something like this, what's the remedy? How is a court going to order some developer to undo a transaction posted to an immutable ledger? What do you do when the source of truth is wrong, and cannot be altered?

erulabs 4y ago
Agreed the original post was a bit of a straw man but now we’re just weighing risks. If a court can make a stupid decision with someone’s assets then it flows both ways: a court can take as well as return. So yes crypto fails to be recoverable by a court - but that’s obviously offset by being difficult to be stolen by a court too. The fact that most western countries don’t wholesale steal from their citizens means it’s easy to discount this benefit in the face of this cost.

wpietri 4y ago

> People keep claiming over and over that you'd not lose money like this with (non-smart) contracts because the court would always rule your way. If people do it that much, surely you could give us links to 3 or 4 of them? I'm interested, as I've never seen anybody claim that.

specialp 4y ago

I don't think any "people" are claiming it will ALWAYS go your way, and if they are they are wrong. The point is at least you have a shot at some sort of remediation. You can appeal to courts and work it out. Sometimes there can be an error so egregious that you end up losing your money. But in general the intent of a contract is strongly considered with human decisions. Computers have no concept of intent. Yes incompetence is everywhere, but how often does one messed up line lose millions of dollars? Even skilled developers make mistakes. We saw it at the very dawn of smart contracts with the DAO being broken, and Ethereum forking which blew up the "irreversabilty feature", and showed that there is great potential for a contract to be not what was intended. With crypto if the cryptography is secure you have absolutely zero recourse to get your money back. Ever. One of the selling points of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts is the non reversibility/mutability of them. However it has been shown many times that that causes harm more often then it has benefit. Loads of assets have been stolen/lost/rendered irrecoverable. In this case ALL parties would agree that it is definitely not was desired when they went into the contract so it would not even have to go to mediation. They could simply write a new contract rendering the other void in the non crypto world.