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0 pointsknorker3y ago0 comments

The article even hints at this:

> [a crypto bro] criticized the team for turning to a centralized institution like the courts for help

But that's exactly the flaw of smart contracts, and why its promises will never work.

The hard part of contracts was never execution. The hard part was always conflict resolution and abidance by fair rules (i.e. "laws"). The hard part is what creates the overhead.

Smart contracts never solved the hard part. They remove the solution to the hard part, claiming the hard part is not needed at all. But the problems these solutions solve are the hard part. Pretending they don't exist is not "solving" anything.

There are so many examples of this. A minor can't enter into a contract. Severely mentally disabled can't either. Someone with a gun to their head can't either. It doesn't matter if they enter into a million dollar contract. That contract is invalid.

This is not "waste". This is the hard parts.

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setr3y ago

Eventually there will be smart contracts with assigned arbitrators capable of undoing dependent smart contract transactions, with the right to execute granted by a separate smart contract, which is controlled by a vote to be taken by a randomly selected set of peers in the community, who must first watch in total a video of the aggrieved and offending parties position their argument.

And arbitration contracts that can arbitrate the arbitration contracts, and so on.

And perhaps a smart contract to allow the amendment of existing contract, by vote of a group of wallets who’ve been elected by another smart contract, who’ve been elected by another smart contract with a larger pool of voters, and so on, until all stakeholders in the contract have had the chance to cast a vote, whose duration as a voter is limited to a 2-4 year term, before requiring another voting round.

knorkerOP3y ago

Maybe. But you still need an override from real courts, when the contracts fail.

That's what courts are for. When someone finds an exploit in the smart contract there must be a "no that's clearly not what anyone meant. Nobody actually wanted all the money in the world to go to Hacker McHackerface".

If your assumption is that one of these contract layers is "perfect", then it's not realistic.

setr3y ago

Thats why you have the arbitration contract… to allow an arbiter to undo the work, with the reasoning “this isn’t what was intended”

But anyways that was in jest; the crypto community will eventually recreate the same systems and bureaucracies already in play today as they run into all the edge cases that occur with traditional currency (fundamentally: currency carries provenance and is only fungible until its not, and the transfer of funds between two parties does not actually involve only the two parties — and lawyers write excessively defensive, excessively long contracts for a reason).

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0 pointsknorker3y ago0 comments

The article even hints at this:

> [a crypto bro] criticized the team for turning to a centralized institution like the courts for help

But that's exactly the flaw of smart contracts, and why its promises will never work.

The hard part of contracts was never execution. The hard part was always conflict resolution and abidance by fair rules (i.e. "laws"). The hard part is what creates the overhead.

This is not "waste". This is the hard parts.

0 comments

setr3y ago

And arbitration contracts that can arbitrate the arbitration contracts, and so on.

knorkerOP3y ago

Maybe. But you still need an override from real courts, when the contracts fail.

If your assumption is that one of these contract layers is "perfect", then it's not realistic.

setr3y ago

Thats why you have the arbitration contract… to allow an arbiter to undo the work, with the reasoning “this isn’t what was intended”

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse