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Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

plasma.io

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Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#31

Post by contingencies »

colordrops wrote: post #27
contingencies wrote: post #2

Smart contracts are being suggested as the building block of "autonomous corporations" (implying "do anything!") yet nearly anything meaningful basically has to interact with the real world through agents external to the contract for most business cases. Given this severe limitation, could someone clarify what the whole shebang is supposed to be about? I actually saw Vitalik speak last week or so here in Shenzhen cam…

The value comes from a hybrid of blockchain contracts and legal contracts. The contracts that actually manage an asset would run on the blockchain, and the legal contracts would enforce the rights to that asset in the physical world. Managing the asset in the blockchain would avoid unnecessary fees, opacity, and cheating, and the legal contract binds the results to the real world.

Sounds very smooth but the assumption that lawyers, escrow service providers or anyone else would allow you to pay them less because you are using a new technology runs counter to my personal experience.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#32

Post by weego »

darawk wrote: post #21
mrep wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why has nobody done that then? It blows my mind how so many people proliferate how useful blockchain companies can be yet despite all of the different blockchains, ICO's..., practically none [1] have taken off because they are technologically and economically worse than current market products and services. [1]: Illegal markets are the only market I have seen that do like it because companies/governments have sp…

Nobody has done it because it's inefficient right now, and the ecosystem is still only trusted by a relatively small minority of nerds like myself and others here. This proposal is a solution to one of those problems.

Why will the future change the level of inefficiency?

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#33

Post by paulgerhardt »

mrep wrote: post #18
AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Kickstarter? A $500 million+ company that takes a 5% vig on all transacted funds can effectively be replaced with a few lines of code. If total ETH sent to contract address by date X > Amount Y then send the ETH to the fundraiser, else return the ETH.

Then why has nobody done that then? It blows my mind how so many people proliferate how useful blockchain companies can be yet despite all of the different blockchains, ICO's..., practically none [1] have taken off because they are technologically and economically worse than current market products and services. [1]: Illegal markets are the only market I have seen that do like it because companies/governments have sp…

They have.

I have.

How you take funds for your campaign is configurable. The projects which took USD raised millions more than the projects which took various cryptocurrencies at the time of funding. The upside of having a smart contract 'guarantee' your funds was outweighed by the downside of drop-off in getting your potential customers to acquire and pay you using an obscure financial instrument.

This looks to be changing.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#34

Post by mthoms »

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #23
contingencies wrote: post #2

Smart contracts are being suggested as the building block of "autonomous corporations" (implying "do anything!") yet nearly anything meaningful basically has to interact with the real world through agents external to the contract for most business cases. Given this severe limitation, could someone clarify what the whole shebang is supposed to be about? I actually saw Vitalik speak last week or so here in Shenzhen cam…

I've been thinking the same thing over the last few months... I see all of these "prediction markets" and "gambling platforms" being launched and claiming that they are "fully autonomous". Well where do they get the outcome information from? It must be from a person. You cannot program a smart contract to know who has the most reliable sports scores or political information. AI does not exist yet. If I bet that Hilla…

By participating you're agreeing with whatever mechanism has been coded into the contract (which you can read for yourself). Obviously, you'd be stupid to participate in a contract that relies solely on twitter for resolution.

But, for sports scores the contract could be coded to check all three of espn.com, nfl.com and abcsports.com (just for example).

Same with the election results: usa.gov, cnn.com, foxnews.com, bbcnews.com

You make a valid point I think, but the examples you gave are pretty trivial. More complex ones are another matter.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#35

Post by phlo »

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #5
contingencies wrote: post #2

Smart contracts are being suggested as the building block of "autonomous corporations" (implying "do anything!") yet nearly anything meaningful basically has to interact with the real world through agents external to the contract for most business cases. Given this severe limitation, could someone clarify what the whole shebang is supposed to be about? I actually saw Vitalik speak last week or so here in Shenzhen cam…

What about Kickstarter? A $500 million+ company that takes a 5% vig on all transacted funds can effectively be replaced with a few lines of code. If total ETH sent to contract address by date X > Amount Y then send the ETH to the fundraiser, else return the ETH.

The part of Kickstarter you're describing isn't worth any significant fraction of these $500m. If it were, Indiegogo, Gofundme and all others in the space would need to be well on the unicorn track.

A saying goes "Ideas are cheap, execution is everything". That's where this value of $500m comes in. It's in the brand reputation the company has built. In the traffic they generate by people browsing their site and discovering projects they might back. In the UI they've set up, and most of all, it's in the trust that they actually do some amount of quality checking. In the thought that projects on Kickstarter stand a better chance of executing than projects on competitor's sites.

You can get someone to write the necessary code for "if funded send to x, else return funds" on any freelance site for a four-digit amount, whether you want it in Solidity or PHP. That's the easy part. The hard part then is building a better platform, policing the projects on there, ensuring quality and attracting backers.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#36

Post by mrep »

darawk wrote: post #21
mrep wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why has nobody done that then? It blows my mind how so many people proliferate how useful blockchain companies can be yet despite all of the different blockchains, ICO's..., practically none [1] have taken off because they are technologically and economically worse than current market products and services. [1]: Illegal markets are the only market I have seen that do like it because companies/governments have sp…

Nobody has done it because it's inefficient right now, and the ecosystem is still only trusted by a relatively small minority of nerds like myself and others here. This proposal is a solution to one of those problems.

When will it ever be efficient?

All blockchains rely on re-computing the same transaction across many different entities due to mistrust. However, despite the common sentiment that computers are cheap; at scale, the are definitely not. Every additional computation to validate something increases the cost of business and 99% of businesses are cutthroat when it comes to cost.

Add in the other downsides/costs of crypto.* (my insights on the downsides of blockchain specifically: hard to use, one way transactions, high transfer costs due to low block size, super easy to get hacked and lose all your money...) and it's no wonder they are all failing.

99.999% of the time, the costs outway the benefits.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#37

Post by shp0ngle »

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #5
contingencies wrote: post #2

Smart contracts are being suggested as the building block of "autonomous corporations" (implying "do anything!") yet nearly anything meaningful basically has to interact with the real world through agents external to the contract for most business cases. Given this severe limitation, could someone clarify what the whole shebang is supposed to be about? I actually saw Vitalik speak last week or so here in Shenzhen cam…

What about Kickstarter? A $500 million+ company that takes a 5% vig on all transacted funds can effectively be replaced with a few lines of code. If total ETH sent to contract address by date X > Amount Y then send the ETH to the fundraiser, else return the ETH.

There was a platform called Lighthouse, made by Mike Hearn (developer of Bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT).

It wasn't very popular or very user friendly, I think the development stopped one year ago

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#38

Post by nemild »

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #5
contingencies wrote: post #2

Smart contracts are being suggested as the building block of "autonomous corporations" (implying "do anything!") yet nearly anything meaningful basically has to interact with the real world through agents external to the contract for most business cases. Given this severe limitation, could someone clarify what the whole shebang is supposed to be about? I actually saw Vitalik speak last week or so here in Shenzhen cam…

What about Kickstarter? A $500 million+ company that takes a 5% vig on all transacted funds can effectively be replaced with a few lines of code. If total ETH sent to contract address by date X > Amount Y then send the ETH to the fundraiser, else return the ETH.

This thinking is a common mistake I see from teams that think only about tech.

User acquisition is critical in the success of marketplaces. Usability is often ignored too.

Even today, if you create an eBay (granted, a much stickier marketplace than Kickstarter) with no fees, it's not as simple as throwing the doors open and expecting everyone to switch.

You can read more here, in a different example I dig into (Slack vs IRC): https://www.nemil.com/musings/oss-and-slack.html

If you ever want, I'm happy to have the debate with you (email in profile). If you really want to compete, you're going to need to be aware of what it'll really take to win, not just decentralized/blockchain and no fees.

(And as a nit, I can also build a website in a week that takes 2% credit card vig without blockchain - sure I know you'll argue that I can raise the price later, but I'm still not going to win against Kickstarter without something more than just a cheaper price)

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#39

Post by justicezyx »

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #5
contingencies wrote: post #2

Smart contracts are being suggested as the building block of "autonomous corporations" (implying "do anything!") yet nearly anything meaningful basically has to interact with the real world through agents external to the contract for most business cases. Given this severe limitation, could someone clarify what the whole shebang is supposed to be about? I actually saw Vitalik speak last week or so here in Shenzhen cam…

What about Kickstarter? A $500 million+ company that takes a 5% vig on all transacted funds can effectively be replaced with a few lines of code. If total ETH sent to contract address by date X > Amount Y then send the ETH to the fundraiser, else return the ETH.

In my imagination, I can replace anything with some equivalent and cost much less.

But how?

How can you replace kickstarter with a few lines of code? Through your wonderful imagination that can bend reality? Or through your convincing argument that kickerstarter volunteered to turn itself into a few lines of code.

Or what?

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#40

Post by mrep »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #33
mrep wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why has nobody done that then? It blows my mind how so many people proliferate how useful blockchain companies can be yet despite all of the different blockchains, ICO's..., practically none [1] have taken off because they are technologically and economically worse than current market products and services. [1]: Illegal markets are the only market I have seen that do like it because companies/governments have sp…

They have. I have. How you take funds for your campaign is configurable. The projects which took USD raised millions more than the projects which took various cryptocurrencies at the time of funding. The upside of having a smart contract 'guarantee' your funds was outweighed by the downside of drop-off in getting your potential customers to acquire and pay you using an obscure financial instrument. This looks to be c…

Can you reword your comment as I don't quite understand what point you are trying to argue?
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