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Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

plasma.io

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Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#111

Post by dragonwriter »

atarian wrote: post #20
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…

>Anything meaningful basically has to interact with the real world through agents external to the contract This is where people are betting to take a risk that the law will change to legalize and maybe even incorporate these contracts. Take a prenuptial agreement for example. Instead of having a lawyer, a smart contract could automatically split ether from an account into two addresses. https://www.coindesk.com/prenu…

> Instead of having a lawyer, a smart contract could automatically split ether from an account into two addresses.

Which would replace a prenup only with an oracle for the conditions (which can be more complicated than just divorce, but even divorce is an off-chain event requiring an oracle) and, even then, only if ETH were the only assets owned by the couple.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#113

Post by bpicolo »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #54
mmckeen wrote: post #46

Plasma is already the name of KDE's desktop interface. Reusing the name of an already known project is confusing.

Yeah, I just click thinking that was something about KDE. Bad feeling give mes, someone that "steals" some popular opensource name for his business.

Using basic/common 6 letter words is not any sort of theft.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#114

Post by davidgerard »

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…

Yep. The "oracle problem" is the crippling flaw (the main crippling flaw amongst a pile of others) in smart contracts.

As Matt Levine from Bloomberg put it:"My immutable unforgeable cryptographically secure blockchain record proving that I have 10,000 pounds of aluminum in a warehouse is not much use to a bank if I then smuggle the aluminum out of the warehouse through the back door."

Technology and business journalists writing about non- cryptocurrency use cases for smart contracts never seem to mention that their "trustless" system will still involve trusting humans wherever it touches the physical world. You may have a tamperproof system for running contract code, but the inputs have to come from outside this secure space.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#115

Post by davidgerard »

TTPrograms wrote: post #30
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…

> Smart contracts are being suggested as the building block of "autonomous corporations" By who? I'm not aware of any major developers suggesting this. As far as I can tell this is just a strawman promoted on HN. The Dao was a single instantiation of this sort of idea promoted by a small number of non-core developers - it doesn't define the idea of smart contracts.

Heavily promoted by the Ethereum Foundation principals, and by, oh look, Stephen Tual of slock.it. It's an idea that's been around a long time in the airy-fairy world of smart contract hypothesising.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#116

Post by bpicolo »

davidgerard wrote: post #114
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…

Yep. The "oracle problem" is the crippling flaw (the main crippling flaw amongst a pile of others) in smart contracts. As Matt Levine from Bloomberg put it:"My immutable unforgeable cryptographically secure blockchain record proving that I have 10,000 pounds of aluminum in a warehouse is not much use to a bank if I then smuggle the aluminum out of the warehouse through the back door." Technology and business journali…

Doesn't the commodities futures market pose have the same baseline issue? How is that managed? My layman understanding is that it's quite similar.

Disclaimer: I know almost nothing about commodities markets.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#117

Post by spookthesunset »

bhouston wrote: post #48
mrep wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

There is proof of stake algos coming that make it efficient.

Proof of stake is something that "has been coming along" for years now. Sounds like vaporware to me.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#118

Post by spookthesunset »

stingrae wrote: post #29
tribby wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

without the 5%, kickstarter would not be a successful marketing platform. financial transactions are just part of what they do.

I think the 5% doesn't even include the financial transaction which is another 3% that goes to stripe. People give Kickstarter the 5% for the marketing and trust the platform tries to build.

I doubt kickstarter pays 3% in fees...

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#119

Post by erikpukinskis »

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…

One big benefit of crypto is you can't cook the books. So in markets where there is constant temptations for a human to say "I'm guarding he vault, why not fudge the numbers here a little and pay out my friends" those institutions will lose share to crypto.

The other market that intrigues me is autonomous AIs. I can imagine an AI that can more easily trust a smart contract than a human institution.

Essentially, you are right, but you're biased because you feel good in your network of human trust. Replacing that world with machines doesn't buy you anything because you'll still want to keep your human layer as the bottom line. But not everyone is so nestled in the bosom of modernity.

Also consider scale. Banks won't loan you $1000. It's not worth the time to do the math, and find an appraiser. But a crypto contract can do the math for free, and a network of appraisers would contain someone who can do really fast work on a tight schedule. Like, "show up at Highland Mall on Saturday afternoon, I will appraise 50 businesses in 3 hours".

That business model only works if you have infrastructure that takes care of everything else than the appraising, with much richer modeling than even banks use today.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#120

Post by erikpukinskis »

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…

One big benefit of crypto is you can't cook the books. So in markets where there is constant temptations for a human to say "I'm guarding he vault, why not fudge the numbers here a little and pay out my friends" those institutions will lose share to crypto.

The other market that intrigues me is autonomous AIs. I can imagine an AI that can more easily trust a smart contract than a human institution.

Essentially, you are right, but you're biased because you feel good in your network of human trust. Replacing that world with machines doesn't buy you anything because you'll still want to keep your human layer as the bottom line. But not everyone is so nestled in the bosom of modernity.

Also consider scale. Banks won't loan you $1000. It's not worth the time to do the math, and find an appraiser. But a crypto contract can do the math for free, and a network of appraisers would contain someone who can do really fast work on a tight schedule. Like, "show up at Highland Mall on Saturday afternoon, I will appraise 50 businesses in 3 hours".

That business model only works if you have infrastructure that takes care of everything else than the appraising, with much richer modeling than even banks use today.

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