Smart Contracts Are Useless • Hacker News Board

Re: Smart Contracts Are Useless

#11

Post by kolinko » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

tom_mellior wrote: post #10

jbverschoor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means exactly what it says Legally binding contract. You know, the law, lawyers, written signatures

Signatures from "the public"?

I don’t know about the american law, but in polish we have a concept called „public promise”. If a company promises to the public that they will do something, it will be legally binding and they can be sued if they don’t fulfill the promise.

For example, if a company says that they will give a prize to the first person who collects a 1000 bottle caps, the first person that does that can sue the company if it backtracks. Even if there was no agreement between the conoany and the person beforehand.

We used it for tokenising real world assets. The entity doing ITO behind the asset made a public promise to give the asset to a person chosen by the contract under certain conditions. Even though the person was not known in advance, they would have the right to sue the company if they didn’t fulfill the promise.

Re: Smart Contracts Are Useless

#12

Post by kolinko » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

tom_mellior wrote: post #10

jbverschoor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means exactly what it says Legally binding contract. You know, the law, lawyers, written signatures

Signatures from "the public"?

Here you go, public promise article in Polish wikipedia. It seems there is no english translation - go figure.

It is a part of the European legal system, and provisions for it appear in German, Italian, Polish, Turkish and French laws.

It's a one-sided contract essentially, so there is no need for a member of public to sign it. But if you don't fulfill it, the affected member of public can sue you.

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przyrzeczenie_publiczne

Re: Smart Contracts Are Useless

#13

Post by tom_mellior » Fri, Feb 26, 2021, 11:41 AM UTC

kolinko wrote: post #11

tom_mellior wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signatures from "the public"?

I don’t know about the american law, but in polish we have a concept called „public promise”. If a company promises to the public that they will do something, it will be legally binding and they can be sued if they don’t fulfill the promise. For example, if a company says that they will give a prize to the first person who collects a 1000 bottle caps, the first person that does that can sue the company if it backtrac…

Thanks. This makes sense, it is indeed a sort of legally binding agreement between a company and "the public". I'll note that despite the grandparent's flippant comment, this does not involve a "contract" or "written signatures".

However, this kind of competition or prize is kind of the inverse of an oracle: The company says that they will give someone money for certain actions. The oracle is the inverse: It promises to perform certain actions for anyone who gives it money.

In some sense I realized that there is a similarity to mail order catalogues, where you don't have a contract with the company before sending them money out of the blue. But is that the law that an actual court would apply to a random website that announces "we will provide accurate data about X to anyone who sends Y amount of Ether to address Z"? Possible. (But again, not a contract with "written signatures".)

Re: Smart Contracts Are Useless

#14

Post by kolinko » Sat, Feb 27, 2021, 8:37 AM UTC

tom_mellior wrote: post #13

kolinko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about the american law, but in polish we have a concept called „public promise”. If a company promises to the public that they will do something, it will be legally binding and they can be sued if they don’t fulfill the promise. For example, if a company says that they will give a prize to the first person who collects a 1000 bottle caps, the first person that does that can sue the company if it backtrac…

Thanks. This makes sense, it is indeed a sort of legally binding agreement between a company and "the public". I'll note that despite the grandparent's flippant comment, this does not involve a "contract" or "written signatures". However, this kind of competition or prize is kind of the inverse of an oracle: The company says that they will give someone money for certain actions. The oracle is the inverse: It promises…

Yes, it’s not a contract with written signatures, but can be binding.

In my case it wasn’t oracles, but tying up real world assets to tokens. The company had to be obliged to fulfill what contract told it, and we managed to grt it working from a legal perspective.