Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts • Hacker News Board

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#121

Post by factorialboy » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 4:36 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #119

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 a…

Sure you can cook the books. It's called forking. The DAO hack never happened after the fork.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#122

Post by stingrae » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #118

stingrae wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

They don't. That was the point. It is really 5% + 3%.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#123

Post by notahacker » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 5:08 PM UTC

bpicolo wrote: post #116

davidgerard wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If third parties can't or won't settle accounts they can involve lawyers or regulators, the very people that some of the "code-as-contract" evangelists were arguing could be [largely] eliminated.

The point is that the blockchain makes little difference to a third party's ability to not honour most real goods and services contracts, and ascribing too much authority to its records can even reinforce their lie about paying you, because that's what the tamper proof record of the aluminium-filled warehouse says they did.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#124

Post by modeless » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

Did anyone read the paper? I tried to, and it's a mess. There isn't nearly enough technical detail there to actually implement this system, and the incentives are so complex that game theory experts could be analyzing it for decades without finding all the potential issues. This is nothing like the Bitcoin white paper, which was very clear and complete.

Vitalik has created Ethereum of course, and he's not asking for investment, so this is better than your garden variety ICO scam. But right now this is more of a wishlist of desired features than a roadmap to implementation.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#125

Post by smokeyj » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

flexie wrote: post #72

smokeyj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does every crypto thread have these vacuous comments? Normally adding a "I agree" comment is met with "use the arrow". Maybe we could come up with a "HN law of crypto" that states all articles must be met with "paper money works just fine" or "just another tulip scheme". It seems asking for constructive criticism is out of the question due to the ideological motivations behind the criticisms.

I think it's because it is both hard to understand and hard to explain cryptocurrencies at the moment. It's like discussing email or social networks based on papers and ideas without really ever having seen it in action. We tend to get a bit aggressive or impatient when we find it hard to explain something. Also, crypto skeptics realise that the crypto fans literally have money at stake so they are not unbiased. Mayb…

> Maybe crypto skeptics are also a bit worried that perhaps there is something they didn't get.

It's Econ 101 they don't get. It's the origin of money they don't get. With every tulip argument it becomes painfully obvious that "progressives" are economically illiterate. They talk about supply and demand they way conservatives talk about global warming being "only a theory". This Cryptophobia (let the record show I coined the term :P ) is not technologically rooted.

The only thing I want is for productive conversation to occur - but from a technical aspect. Maybe there could be a tab where people argue from an ideological perspective. But the reason I'm frustrated is that literally every crypto thread has the same comments.

Let's just all admit we're not going to convert anyone, and if you don't have constructive inputs to the technology then reconsider commenting.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#126

Post by will_brown » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

ge96 wrote: post #69

will_brown wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know people can launch a crowdfunding project that is decentralized, They don't need an ICO or blockchain, just a website. But there is a reason people don't do that, something to do with the value centralized platforms provide. Plus I'm not entirely sure anyone should trust smart contracts to actually perform such a function, next thing you know someone other than the project created takes all the funds pursu…

The concept of decentralized apps, where does the initial copy come from that is then installed/copied onto other devices? (time to go read)

Maybe I'm wrong about my understanding....but maybe you are confusing decentralized with distributed.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#127

Post by smokeyj » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #83

flexie wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because it is both hard to understand and hard to explain cryptocurrencies at the moment. It's like discussing email or social networks based on papers and ideas without really ever having seen it in action. We tend to get a bit aggressive or impatient when we find it hard to explain something. Also, crypto skeptics realise that the crypto fans literally have money at stake so they are not unbiased. Mayb…

"Crypto" isn't binary. There's a gold nugget in there somewhere buried under a literal mountain of (occasionally willful) disinformation, flimsy whitepapers and opportunistic ICOs that can best be described as Ponzi schemes. Spend any amount of time on bitcointalk or any of the altcoin subreddits to see what I'm talking about. That - IMO - is what "crypto skeptics" are actually skeptical of.

"The internet will never work because Pets.com is stupid" - would be a perfectly valid position to hold after the dot com bust. But those unable to separate HTTP from Pets.com are the real suckers. I guess that's why some people get rich and others sit on their hands and complain.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#128

Post by deweller » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

factorialboy wrote: post #121

erikpukinskis wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Sure you can cook the books. It's called forking. The DAO hack never happened after the fork.

But unlike cooking the books forking is publicly auditable to anyone running a validating node.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#129

Post by contingencies » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #87

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…

> In short, adding a decentralized network of paid/incentivized actors to any existing potential cryptographic problem space (a fair rough summary of the smart contract notion?), in particular the subset relevant for most businesses, doesn't seem to solve anything particularly well and typically decreases critical measures of engineering elegance such as simplicity, comprehensibility, predictability, etc. while incre…

You could say very much the same thing about most supply-side innovations when they came out

Maybe. If the input and output are the same, but the efficiency is larger, or the quality is greater or more controllable, then you have some value-add.

If the input and output are artificially constricted and the business case is basically undefined then skepticism is expected and logical.

I never denied there are use cases, just stated they are very limited. I stand by that assessment.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#130

Post by tylersmith » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

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.

PoS does not have anything to do with all nodes having to validate transactions. You're looking for sharding.