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Those are not 'smart contracts' in the sense you think they are. They are (probably) governed by some kind of broader contract, and can probably be 'undone' or

Those are not 'smart contracts' in the sense you think they are. They are (probably) governed by some kind of broader contract, and can probably be 'undone' or come under regulator scrutiny. 'Smart contracts' are a neat way for parties to 'agree' on something in a distributed way - but there's just no way that they will live up to being 'regular contracts'. Maybe for some things like currency exchange - maybe. But for anything else that happens in this world, contracts are complicated and require nuance. And there's always lawyers and a Judge and regulators that might want to have a say. And while the application you've described is 'neat' - it doesn't really accomplish much. It's a novelty. I see zero use for blockchain thus far - other than the eventual appearance of a possibly useful kind of crypto asset that doesn't exist yet because BTC and Etherium are full of flaws.

exdsq 4y ago
> Those are not 'smart contracts' in the sense you think they are. > They are (probably) governed by some kind of broader contract, and can probably be 'undone' or come under regulator scrutiny. By smart contract, in this regard, I mean an Ethereum Solidity contract connected to an Oracle that has an Escrow component. The way I see it is there are many companies at the moment that sit in the middle and mediate things by offering escrow services and trust that if you send X you'll receive Y. Crypto lets you start moving those things into a P2P setting by its nature of atomic transactions, programatic contracts/money, etc... Which I find pretty cool and I think a lot of people who spend some time in the space find cool too. FWIW I was skeptical when I first found a bitcoin ATM at Google Campus in 2014 and only really 'got it' in 2020 after years of saying WTF is the point? And for me that was when I was trying to organise an esports tournament with some strangers online and couldn't decide on how payments would work, while the services that managed this (read some API results and paid out after 7 working days) took a 15% fee.
- jollybean 4y ago
  Those are good thoughts - the issue with 'escrow' however remains complicated - it generally implies some kind of authoritative clearing of a contract by some kind of 3rd party. If 2 people are arbitrarily entering into a contract, then I'm not sure how much 'true escrow' can really be had.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

exdsq 4y ago

> Those are not 'smart contracts' in the sense you think they are. > They are (probably) governed by some kind of broader contract, and can probably be 'undone' or come under regulator scrutiny. By smart contract, in this regard, I mean an Ethereum Solidity contract connected to an Oracle that has an Escrow component. The way I see it is there are many companies at the moment that sit in the middle and mediate things by offering escrow services and trust that if you send X you'll receive Y. Crypto lets you start moving those things into a P2P setting by its nature of atomic transactions, programatic contracts/money, etc... Which I find pretty cool and I think a lot of people who spend some time in the space find cool too. FWIW I was skeptical when I first found a bitcoin ATM at Google Campus in 2014 and only really 'got it' in 2020 after years of saying WTF is the point? And for me that was when I was trying to organise an esports tournament with some strangers online and couldn't decide on how payments would work, while the services that managed this (read some API results and paid out after 7 working days) took a 15% fee.

jollybean 4y ago
Those are good thoughts - the issue with 'escrow' however remains complicated - it generally implies some kind of authoritative clearing of a contract by some kind of 3rd party. If 2 people are arbitrarily entering into a contract, then I'm not sure how much 'true escrow' can really be had.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]