Ethereum from scratch – Part 1: Ping • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum from scratch – Part 1: Ping

#131

Post by erikpukinskis » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 12:50 AM UTC

adrianratnapala wrote: post #71

guscost wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EVM is Turing-complete, so this will be a risk with any language that compiles into a smart contract. Solidity doesn't appeal to me because its goal seems to be on-boarding JavaScript programmers. But new languages that compile to EVM can be easier to use "safely" and you will see several of these in the next few years. I'm really excited that a project to embed Turing-complete behavior in a blockchain has actual…

The EVM might be Turing complete but you can still have languages that compile down to only some tractable sub-set of the possible EVM programs. The interesting question is whether a language can be design which allows the important domain-relevant requirements to written down in an understandable way and also proved rigorously. So far neither lawyers nor programmers have done a very good job of this in their respect…

Huh? Lawyers have done an exceptional job. There are huge swaths of activity around which there is consensus about legal dogma.

And huge swaths of activity where programmers have laid out clear deterministic expectations.

If you're saying lawyers have failed to specify the legal ramifications of All Possible Activity then... Sure. So? Even if Ethereum only works for one single narrowly defined contract, it could be immensely useful.

The question for me isn't "where could it fall short" but "where might it measure up?"

Re: Ethereum from scratch – Part 1: Ping

#132

Post by erikpukinskis » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 12:56 AM UTC

max_ wrote: post #59

xj9 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

professional etherem devs haven't even gotten to the point where they can write correct contracts themselves. but the concept is pretty simple. a "smart contract" is a script that runs on a blockchain to execute terms and manage funds. the problem is that the tools that you use to make these are basically garbage. you don't write fin-tech in what amounts to javascript y'know?

A law can only can be as bug free as software? 100% bug free software is impossible! As long as they are written by humans? Their will always be bugs. Matter who is writting them.

It doesn't need to be bug free if there are checks and balances. Like an independent contract layer that holds funds in escrow for 10 days and allow a third party to cancel fraudulent transaction under certain conditions.

You don't need to prevent all bad behaviors, just slow attackers down.

Of course sometimes they can get through the review process too, but you start having probabilities you can multiply to decrease the likelihood of losses.

Over time we'll start to have good defaults for how those checks work. For now it's the wild west.

Re: Ethereum from scratch – Part 1: Ping

#133

Post by erikpukinskis » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 1:03 AM UTC

zdkl wrote: post #82

globuous wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think of smart contracts as ways to program money. Imagine if you could program a dollar bill. Then there's lots of cool stuff that could be done :) If you could program money, you might not really need insurers anymore. You could just program insuree's money so it redistributed appropriately in case of flooding (for eg). No need to give you money to an entity and have a conflict of interest with your insur…

I'd argue most consumer insurance programs depend a lot on interpretation. You don't want to be exposed to Inadvertent Algorthmic Cruelty when you're in a situation where your civil insurance should kick in. IMO Smart contracts are a good way to model and trade securities, options or futures instead, leaving the underlying assets to be managed by real world humans who can make things happen out of the blockchain.

You'd still be able to rely on human interpreters, who would do all the on-the-ground work the insurance adjuster does. There would be a clearinghouse for those jobs, and contractors would do them.

The incentives could be set up such that the cost of being caught straying from protocol would be higher than the fraud opportunity.

Or you could just reply on network-of-trust. Brand loyalty, etc. Choose Aetna claim investigators! We Follow Protocol

Re: Ethereum from scratch – Part 1: Ping

#134

Post by mbrock » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #122

mbrock wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's basically all I'm saying. 1. Payments and value management on the internet currently suck horribly compared to what you could imagine. (Insert your own imaginations here, since you don't like mine.) 2. Some attempts are being done to make payments and value management on the internet more convenient, but they are controlled by central authorities -- Facebook, Apple, Google, Twitter, Amazon, whatever -- so they…

" Blockchains are the only way I know of to do this kind of thing without that kind of central authority, in a thoroughly open source way." Alternatively, the banks or payment companies are a series of non-profit foundations with protections or basic rights of customers built into their charter using regular, efficient databases with zero or low cost transfer between them. You pay a small, monthly fee to participate…

I'm interested in such schemes, but I suspect that the best way to implement it would resemble a delegated proof of stake blockchain.