On 18/03/15 07:45 PM, Pall Thayer wrote: > Honestly, I don't get the whole cryptocontract thing.
Like cryptocurrency, smart-contracts / crypto-contracts are a simplification. They're not (yet) like an employment contract or house insurance, they're more like buying a can of coke from a vending machine: http://szabo.best.vwh.net/smart_contracts_idea.html > To me, contracts > are too negotiable and flexible to be computer controlled. How does a > cryptocontract negotiate a difference in the interpretation of a > contract's terms? Granted, it's not something I've researched at all > but, to me, this gets into the realm of advanced AI and that's where I > go all skeptical. Currently, smart contracts are just meant to be simple daemons that control easily identified resources like an amount of money, doing something with it in response to a well-defined set of inputs. For an example of thinking through some of the negotiations/flexibility you mention, see here: https://dappsforbeginners.wordpress.com/tutorials/two-party-contracts/ and for whether smart contracts are actually contracts in law and what this may mean, see here: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2014/04/difilippi The idea that removing state interference from monetary transactions will make everything cheaper for us (whoever "us" is...) is naive, likewise the idea of contracts as unambiguous and uncaring code stripped of human fallibility and corruptability as an unalloyed good. But as the auction example shows, it's easy to reintroduce human safeguards into these systems. Web search "Decentralized Autonomous Organization" for more fun stuff. I have an article on socialist (rather than anarcho-capitalist...) DAOs coming up for Furtherfield... - Rob.
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