But that's exactly the point.
People are not able to interpret "smart" contracts. For normal contracts most people can understand the contract and if there is a dispute you have laws and courts who can interpret in every case.
In case of "smart" contracts even the contract developers more often than not seem to not be able to understand all consequences.
So if we are trading one set of risks for another it kinda seems to me to be a a really shitty tradeoff.
Things are better on consumer law because it assumes from the start that people are stupid and have no idea what they are doing. But other kinds of contracts have quite large security risks.
In the case of a smart contract, it can even happen that both parties agree in how things should take place when there's a problem! But bad code doesn't work that way, and you can find yourself in a null state of indeterminacy without a built in layer to resolve that.
The entire evolution of legal jargon can be viewed as an attempt to provide a linguistic framework whereby ambiguity is minimized and edge cases are anticipated. But human interactions are chaotic and all outcomes or scenarios can never be predicted, hence the need for a layer of human judgement.
That layer is imperfect, sometimes wrong, sometimes biased, but still necessary. I don't see how smart contracts can work without that sort of layer, but with a human judgment layer then they're not really smart contracts in the way people want such contracts to function.
Trusting any smart contract of sufficient complexity is like trusting that a code base has absolutely zero bugs and zero unanticipated edge cases. I just don't see that as realistic.
If a programmer at a bank or exchanged should have coded ">=" then I want 1) for them to easily be able to act on their intentions instead of their mistake or 2) the ability to bring in a 3rd party to interpret and resolve the situation if #1 doesn't work out.
You can do this to some extent using formal verification. Most code doesn't get formally verified because it's kind of a pain to do, and you can usually fix bugs later, but smart contracts are the perfect candidate for it since they are (1) mission critical, (2) naturally limited in size and scope, and (3) cannot be fixed after the fact. You can write perfect code if you have the right tools and do it carefully.
Laws still apply to things handled with smart contracts. You can't say "well sure the escrow contact did the wrong thing but it's code so you can't come after me for your money back".
If the former system were to be irretrievably corrupt, teetering on the edge of collapse, and the proposed replacement were capable of replacing it then it would be worthwhile.
The existing international financial system is corrupt, the judiciary in most of our world is complicit, but it is not on the edge of collapse (look how brilliantly it sailed through the 2008 crises. It used its political power to get the middle classes to bail out the super rich). The proposed replacement (cryptro currencies) has no support from cryptographers (I am not one) nor finance geeks (that I have been). It is even worse that that which it proposes to replace.
Additionally in most of the Western World we have the democratic institutions that can be put to use to fix the system. Economists are slowly coming around to recognising the catastrophic mess that the current system is, how it is sapping our vitality as a community, enriching the few (hi Unicorn founders - fly to Mars please) and impoverishing the middle classes.
We can fix this. But we have to give up on single fixes (like crypto). This requires modern system thinking....
I am a PhD student in cryptography, and judging by the papers I've read there is plenty of support from cryptographers, many of whom are directly involved in research and development. Silvio Micali is practically a founder of modern cryptography (and Turing Award winner), and he co-created the blockchain Algorand. There is also plenty of opposition, as the subject elicits strong opinions, but the assertion that cryptocurrency has no support from cryptographers is just false.
Aside from the vocal minority of BTC maxis that jerk off to the idea of making a crypto-revolution, no serious developer in crypto wants it to replace the existing systems and institutions. We "only" want to create an alternative for the times and places where the current institutions are insufficient or dysfunctional.
And as a member of the middle class, I personally think it's a feature that cryptocurrency can't be inflated to bail out the rich. If banks knew that they weren't going to get bailed out, they wouldn't have taken as many risks and we would have avoided the whole crisis in the first place.
Lots of chains have holding entities or foundations (nominally for governance, really to justify their premine or "reserves") and seem rather vulnerable, especially if they pay the core developers.
The CEO of that entity won't take your calls but they are absolutely exposed to the whims of the legal system in their founding jurisdiction.
Vitalik did not pass any legally binding decree to get people to comply, and the worst thing that happened to people who disagreed with the change? They got left to play with the other chain.
For this one you need programmers and computers.
On both cases, if you go in blind or wing it you might get burned.
I'm not convinced that programmers and computers can bootstrap to that level of experience very quickly. I think a decade ago I was more optimistic on that possibility, but a decade of repeating history has made me a bit more pessimistic on that ability and cynical about the motives of most people involved.
