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What is Ethereum?

etherscripter.com

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Re: What is Ethereum?

#41

Post by joosters »

kordless wrote: post #36
joosters wrote: post #18

The example contract is very vague and seemingly pointless. The stated problem is 'if the buyer pays before 1st April, then they own the website'. Fair enough, but usually you'd just deal with this without any kind of contract in place. We don't need contracts for simple cases of 'buyer pays money, gets purchase.' A contract would only be interesting in the example if it was structured as an option: The buyer has pro…

The data for WEBSITE_ADMIN is set inside the Ethereum network . I think the term 'website' is tripping people up here. It's actually better defined as 'site with data' which can be accessed via the Ethereum APIs. If you are interested in playing around with the API calls, there is a Docker image for it. I put together a hosted version of this as well, so you don't have install anything to play with it: https://github…

Are you saying that Ethereum is a web hosting platform?

Re: What is Ethereum?

#42

Post by platz »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #24

This is a terrible description of Ethereum and trivializes what it is. The interesting parts of a contract are not the deadline and the transfer of funds. Even an escrow service can provide those functions. The interesting parts of the contract are the conditions of the transfer of funds, and how those are evaluated prior to effectuating the transfer, and how the obligations are enforced after the transfer. What make…

> outsourcing of third-party verifiers

Since people using the network will be in control of constructing their own contracts, they will have an incentive to draft the contract in such a way as to make sure they'll have control over this "outside verifier"; it could even be same company which it chooses to be the "verifier".

> trusted third-party institutions

The defeats the previous attempt at decentralization, by re-centralizing the information the network needs to do it's job.

This is what the network hinges on to gain information about the outside world (and remember, companies will have an incentive to build the contract in such a way to control these trusted third-party institutions as mentioned above).

(I'm aware of schelling coin/contracts; I'm don't think it will work unless it's made a mandatory part of all contracts for all third-party verifiers. For applications that need data that is publicity verifiable, such as the weather or sports outcomes, it could work, but if the information is not is publicity verifiable, e.g. a transaction amongst private parties, I don't see it. And that's only if you force the use of Schelling coin/contracts, which is usually never the first thing Ethereum folks talk about when pitching this; I'm not sure if there are actually plans to implement that.)

Re: What is Ethereum?

#44

Post by bachback »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #39

Isn't fuzziness a feature of most legal codes? Treating the law like an absolute immutable contract sounds anathema to a healthy judicial system. I'm not sure why some technologists have such a fascination with legalism. I'm not against the idea of digital government and having laws be distributed under a free documentation license with the ability for citizens to discuss and amend laws. A standard version control an…

Good observation. There is a continuum in legal language between expressive power in the natural language and the legal formal language. "Absolute immutable contracts" are however very desirable in many cases where people interact with or through machines. Consider that modern computers, in terms of the hardware are extremely deterministic on a macro level, but a lot of the software is fuzzy (UI).

Re: What is Ethereum?

#47

Post by dcosson »

szx wrote: post #37
dcosson wrote: post #30

Presumably smart contracts would very often depend on input external to the system - for example, imagine a will that says if Person A dies, Person B inherits the millions of dollars worth of Ether at a particular address that Person A owns. Somebody (or some other system) has to be in charge of the input to the Ethereum system to tell it that Person A has died. This seems like a huge single point of failure that doe…

While I generally agree with your point, it seems to me like that specific scenario could be solved with a dead man's switch contract. Not ideal, but still better than other cases. I got the impression that the answer you'd get from the Ethereum team is: at the worst case , this is just as bad/good as the current system - i.e. real world effects have to be mediated by an executing authority, same as a real world cont…

You're right, the dead man's switch is interesting here. I wasn't thinking about the ability to reference a fairly precise point in the future via block number instead of an external input to the system.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty excited about smart contracts. It just seems like there are a lot of things that we don't think much about currently because our current system is generally pretty forgiving in its fuzziness, but that could have big consequences (and introduce new incentives to act badly) in the world of script-controlled, irreversible contracts.

Re: What is Ethereum?

#48

Post by logicrime »

This convinced me to not waste another second on Ethereum. It serves a self-defeating purpose, and I think it's diametric to the hacker ethos. Bitcoin is neat because it can't be controlled, nobody can tax it or pose fees on it. It's free market at it's very best. The bitcoin protocol is weak, but luckily developers are strengthening it all the time.

Laws as a general concept are diametric to human nature, and they should be avoided whenever possible, especially in regards to social realms like bartering and contracting and the like.

Re: What is Ethereum?

#49

Post by crucialfelix »

INTPenis wrote: post #16

This will never be unbreakable because no complex system is unbreakable. The reason contracts are messy is because they're a system that has vulnerabilities. Lawyers are just hackers with different tools and training. So moving to another system, equally complex or dynamic, will not solve anything in the long run. A system that must support contracts between humans would be dynamic enough to allow for vulnerabilities…

Skilled programmers will be hired to write these contracts in a complex and verbose way such that the other party is unable to understand it and may not be able to afford to hire programmers to analyze it. They will then be taken advantage of.

So pretty much the same as the current legal and financial system.

Re: What is Ethereum?

#50

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

joosters wrote: post #33
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #24

This is a terrible description of Ethereum and trivializes what it is. The interesting parts of a contract are not the deadline and the transfer of funds. Even an escrow service can provide those functions. The interesting parts of the contract are the conditions of the transfer of funds, and how those are evaluated prior to effectuating the transfer, and how the obligations are enforced after the transfer. What make…

I agree, I think the website is failing because it doesn't touch on a key topic, one that you mention: How does Ethereum handle non-blockchain items? It's easy to see how a blockchain might handle money payments (using its own money system, that is), but far less clear how you can encode contracts for real-world items. Like the example website, for instance. Just because a blockchain entry states 'x' doesn't give it…

To be honest, half the people working as developers on Ethereum itself fail to bring up this point. I don't know if they didn't think about it, or if they just assume everyone is smart enough to think of it themselves.
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