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It makes sense for things that the contract can control. If the contact enforces that when $tokenAmount is sent to $address, $asset is sent to $depositor. If

It makes sense for things that the contract can control. If the contact enforces that when $tokenAmount is sent to $address, $asset is sent to $depositor. If and when more things exist on the blockchain, and/or more physical institutions sign on to it, and/or more and more digital goods are worth transacting in such a fashion, then smart contracts will make more sense. If neither of those materialize more tangibly than they do, it'll be hard to manufacture use cases for it, I think (though I am hardly an expert). But considering the types of things that are already mostly digital, it seems like we have the _potential_ to lean into the latter case. Domain names, accounts, Github subscriptions, e-books, music, rights to watch movies / television shows, etc., those things could all be integrated into the blockchain and enforced via smart contracts easily. Probably the best use case I've seen is stadium / conference tickets, but if we ever get to a phase where companies significantly adopt, we can do some interesting things, like communal ownership of assets. Ownership stake can be variable, depending on who is doing the most work. Profits could then conceivably be distributed among those who have earned it the most. "What to do next" could be a decision that is decided upon by a council of token-holders, for better or worse, and truly non-managerial workers could meaningfully participate in a company's decision-making, profit-sharing, etc.

cortesoft 4y ago
Ok, let's take your example; concert tickets. You will still need to trust a central authority (the concert venue) to honor your ticket. Why not just let the concert venue own the whole thing?
- bmelton 4y ago
  tbf, it's not "my" idea, there are just a couple of NFT-based ticket sales startups that exist and I am aware of them. The main benefit I would see from the venue's perspective is in both scalping prevention and achieving price equilibrium with less effort, because smart contracts can allow a rake to be collected on each resale of a ticket. Beyond that, while this use case doesn't appeal to me, I know of people who've collected scrapbooks of concert tickets, but the NFTs of the tickets are a collectible item (to whatever extent someone deems a digital asset "collectible") and can be potential collected in a digital scrapbook as either social proof or memoria. That said, there's nothing in my view that mandates that the central authority doesn't own the whole thing. You can own the whole thing, either on your own token, or as a non-blockchain product altogether -- or not at all, but there are existing tools and technologies that allow for easier on-ramps than building it yourself and I think most venues don't particularly care what the technology is or that it's NFTs or that it's blockchain, so I don't know of any reason that a blockchain based offering couldn't find itself competitive in the marketplace unless their sales pitch is exclusively that.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > I don't know of any reason that a blockchain based offering couldn't find itself competitive in the marketplace The main reason is that you have shown exactly zero reasons why anyone shold adopt it in a space that's already mostly solved the issue of selling tickets to people. You are teling people to create insane complexity just to solve the single case of selling a single ticket to a single person and pretend that's all there is. And telling people "but it's blockchain so it's good actually". That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works.
    - bmelton 4y ago
      > And telling people "but it's blockchain so it's good actually" I did literally the opposite of that when I said "I don't know of any reason that a blockchain based offering couldn't find itself competitive in the marketplace unless their sales pitch is exclusively that." Restated, I am saying that "but it's blockchain so it's good actually" is not a viable sales pitch. All the rest of my comment are reasons that I think are pitchable features. You seem to have imagined me saying something I didn't and are arguing against what you've imagined I said.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        > I don't know of any reason that a blockchain based offering couldn't find itself competitive in the marketplace So what are the reasons that a a blockchain based offering could be copetitive in the marketplace? And what would bockchain have to do with it? Remember ,we're talking about tickets: a problem largely solved. Where a central authority you trust releases a ticket, and where the central authority you trust verifies the ticket at the venue. So, what is the sales pitch for tickets for a blockchain-based ticketing startup? Other than, you know, "but it's blockchain!" (as all these startups do)
        bmelton 4y ago
        I listed the benefits in my previous message that you have apparently not read now. From another comment you've made "I stopped making an effort [appreciating a pro-blockchain point of view] five-seven years ago for many obvious reasons," I won't bother to re-list them. If you aren't going to engage in good faith because you've imagined me to be a crypto-proponent, I'd appreciate it if you'd at least read what you're trying to argue with.
- Galanwe 4y ago
  You can have hybrid smart contracts, that rely on oracles inserting real world data on chain (see Chainlink for example). You could for instance have 5 independent oracles responsible for validating whether the concert happened or not. The "ticket" smart contract would release the money only if the 5 oracles agree it happened, or refund the buyers otherwise. Chainlink is much more sophisticated than that and handle oracle reputation, cross chain oracle proof, conflict mitigation, etc.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > You can have hybrid smart contracts, that rely on oracles So, trusting centralised data providers. > You could for instance have 5 independent oracles responsible for validating whether the concert happened or not. Ah yes. Because the ticket is validated after the concert has happened, and not, you know, at the entrance to the venue. And also so many "coulda/woulda"s in your description of something that has already been solved and doesn't require mountains of compleiy on top of it. I mean, you can't reliably show how having a single ticket to a single concert would work better than the existing system. And that's the simplest thing that can happen to a ticket.
    - Galanwe 4y ago
      Seriously this blind anti-blockchain trend on HN makes any kind of rational discussion impossible. Can we just stop this and act like engineers and actually _try_ to understand each other? > So, trusting centralised data providers Where did you understood that? Did you even read the comment you're replying to? Chainlink (being just one example of an oracle protocol to illustrate the discussion), allows you to choose how many oracles you want, with whatever reputation constraint you want, strictly named or open ended, with or without whistleblowing/conflict mitigation algorithm, etc. How does that deserves a snarky "So, trusting centralised data providers"?! > Ah yes. Because the ticket is validated after the concert has happened, and not, you know, at the entrance to the venue. There are multiple ways to handle this, a lot of future crypto contract implement something very similar to: - The venue issues tickets that can be purchased through posting money to a smart contract. - The smart contract locks in the money until, say, 5 oracles validate that the concert did happen. - The venue can prove the locked in ticket sale amount as collateral to borrow money in preparation of the concert. - The oracles validate that the concert happened, unlocking the sale money to the venue. or - The concert was a scam, oracles do not validate that it happened, thus ticket sales are refunded. > something that has already been solved and doesn't require mountains of compleiy My comment is not about the rationale or utility of the concert ticket example. It's about how that could be implemented with a smart contract. > And also so many "coulda/woulda"s in your description Chainlink is already used since multiple years to secure billions of dollars of pegged tokens, sport bet results, election results, insurance, etc.

cortesoft 4y ago

Ok, let's take your example; concert tickets. You will still need to trust a central authority (the concert venue) to honor your ticket. Why not just let the concert venue own the whole thing?

bmelton 4y ago
tbf, it's not "my" idea, there are just a couple of NFT-based ticket sales startups that exist and I am aware of them. The main benefit I would see from the venue's perspective is in both scalping prevention and achieving price equilibrium with less effort, because smart contracts can allow a rake to be collected on each resale of a ticket. Beyond that, while this use case doesn't appeal to me, I know of people who've collected scrapbooks of concert tickets, but the NFTs of the tickets are a collectible item (to whatever extent someone deems a digital asset "collectible") and can be potential collected in a digital scrapbook as either social proof or memoria. That said, there's nothing in my view that mandates that the central authority doesn't own the whole thing. You can own the whole thing, either on your own token, or as a non-blockchain product altogether -- or not at all, but there are existing tools and technologies that allow for easier on-ramps than building it yourself and I think most venues don't particularly care what the technology is or that it's NFTs or that it's blockchain, so I don't know of any reason that a blockchain based offering couldn't find itself competitive in the marketplace unless their sales pitch is exclusively that.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > I don't know of any reason that a blockchain based offering couldn't find itself competitive in the marketplace The main reason is that you have shown exactly zero reasons why anyone shold adopt it in a space that's already mostly solved the issue of selling tickets to people. You are teling people to create insane complexity just to solve the single case of selling a single ticket to a single person and pretend that's all there is. And telling people "but it's blockchain so it's good actually". That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works.
  - bmelton 4y ago
    > And telling people "but it's blockchain so it's good actually" I did literally the opposite of that when I said "I don't know of any reason that a blockchain based offering couldn't find itself competitive in the marketplace unless their sales pitch is exclusively that." Restated, I am saying that "but it's blockchain so it's good actually" is not a viable sales pitch. All the rest of my comment are reasons that I think are pitchable features. You seem to have imagined me saying something I didn't and are arguing against what you've imagined I said.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      > I don't know of any reason that a blockchain based offering couldn't find itself competitive in the marketplace So what are the reasons that a a blockchain based offering could be copetitive in the marketplace? And what would bockchain have to do with it? Remember ,we're talking about tickets: a problem largely solved. Where a central authority you trust releases a ticket, and where the central authority you trust verifies the ticket at the venue. So, what is the sales pitch for tickets for a blockchain-based ticketing startup? Other than, you know, "but it's blockchain!" (as all these startups do)
      - bmelton 4y ago
        I listed the benefits in my previous message that you have apparently not read now. From another comment you've made "I stopped making an effort [appreciating a pro-blockchain point of view] five-seven years ago for many obvious reasons," I won't bother to re-list them. If you aren't going to engage in good faith because you've imagined me to be a crypto-proponent, I'd appreciate it if you'd at least read what you're trying to argue with.
Galanwe 4y ago
You can have hybrid smart contracts, that rely on oracles inserting real world data on chain (see Chainlink for example). You could for instance have 5 independent oracles responsible for validating whether the concert happened or not. The "ticket" smart contract would release the money only if the 5 oracles agree it happened, or refund the buyers otherwise. Chainlink is much more sophisticated than that and handle oracle reputation, cross chain oracle proof, conflict mitigation, etc.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > You can have hybrid smart contracts, that rely on oracles So, trusting centralised data providers. > You could for instance have 5 independent oracles responsible for validating whether the concert happened or not. Ah yes. Because the ticket is validated after the concert has happened, and not, you know, at the entrance to the venue. And also so many "coulda/woulda"s in your description of something that has already been solved and doesn't require mountains of compleiy on top of it. I mean, you can't reliably show how having a single ticket to a single concert would work better than the existing system. And that's the simplest thing that can happen to a ticket.
  - Galanwe 4y ago
    Seriously this blind anti-blockchain trend on HN makes any kind of rational discussion impossible. Can we just stop this and act like engineers and actually _try_ to understand each other? > So, trusting centralised data providers Where did you understood that? Did you even read the comment you're replying to? Chainlink (being just one example of an oracle protocol to illustrate the discussion), allows you to choose how many oracles you want, with whatever reputation constraint you want, strictly named or open ended, with or without whistleblowing/conflict mitigation algorithm, etc. How does that deserves a snarky "So, trusting centralised data providers"?! > Ah yes. Because the ticket is validated after the concert has happened, and not, you know, at the entrance to the venue. There are multiple ways to handle this, a lot of future crypto contract implement something very similar to: - The venue issues tickets that can be purchased through posting money to a smart contract. - The smart contract locks in the money until, say, 5 oracles validate that the concert did happen. - The venue can prove the locked in ticket sale amount as collateral to borrow money in preparation of the concert. - The oracles validate that the concert happened, unlocking the sale money to the venue. or - The concert was a scam, oracles do not validate that it happened, thus ticket sales are refunded. > something that has already been solved and doesn't require mountains of compleiy My comment is not about the rationale or utility of the concert ticket example. It's about how that could be implemented with a smart contract. > And also so many "coulda/woulda"s in your description Chainlink is already used since multiple years to secure billions of dollars of pegged tokens, sport bet results, election results, insurance, etc.