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Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

plasma.io

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Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#141

Post by IanCal »

dragonwriter wrote: post #110
IanCal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can get someone to write the necessary code for "if funded send to x, else return funds" on any freelance site for a four-digit amount Can you do so in a way that I as a funder don't need to trust you the intermediary?

> Can you do so in a way that I as a funder don't need to trust you the intermediary? No, and you can't with smart contracts either (the intermediary being the creator of the contract), unless funders are restricted to people with the skill to analyze the contract code. As proven by the DAO. And even if you could, you've replaced only a small-and-useless-in-isolation piece of Kickstarter by doing so.

It moves the trust to the code rather than the entity. Code analysis does not need to be done by all, either.

I'm not saying it's the entirety of kickstarter but I think you're being overly dismissive of the concept. It could work well for things like bug or feature bounties, or other similar situations where having a company to sit in the middle and hold cash requires building up too much reputation than it is worth. Running costs become just the transaction & code running costs on whatever network you're using too.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#142

Post by dragonwriter »

IanCal wrote: post #141
dragonwriter wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you do so in a way that I as a funder don't need to trust you the intermediary? No, and you can't with smart contracts either (the intermediary being the creator of the contract), unless funders are restricted to people with the skill to analyze the contract code. As proven by the DAO. And even if you could, you've replaced only a small-and-useless-in-isolation piece of Kickstarter by doing so.

It moves the trust to the code rather than the entity . Code analysis does not need to be done by all, either. I'm not saying it's the entirety of kickstarter but I think you're being overly dismissive of the concept. It could work well for things like bug or feature bounties, or other similar situations where having a company to sit in the middle and hold cash requires building up too much reputation than it is wort…

> It moves the trust to the code rather than the entity. Code analysis does not need to be done by all, either.

For everyone who doesn't do it on their own, they either have to trust the originator or trust someone who has done it, so for most users you aren't eliminating the need for a trusted third party.

> I'm not saying it's the entirety of kickstarter

That was the upthread claim.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#143

Post by doktrin »

smokeyj wrote: post #140
doktrin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The internet will never work because Pets.com is stupid" - would be a perfectly valid position to hold after the dot com bust. No it wouldn't > I guess that's why some people get rich and others sit on their hands and complain. I honestly don't know what your point is. There's a lot to criticize in the crypto space right now. There's also a lot of money to be made. Those aren't in any way mutually exclusive.

> I honestly don't know what your point is I think you do. It was the sentence before the one you quoted

> But those unable to separate HTTP from Pets.com are the real suckers.

Ok. That's a bit contrived but is easy enough to agree with.

> I think you do.

Are we aggressively agreeing?

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#144

Post by qznc »

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.

That only works with immature small networks. A counter example would be Bitcoin Cash.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#145

Post by ge96 »

will_brown wrote: post #126
ge96 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm pretty sure that I am unsure of what I'm talking about. Time to go read.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#146

Post by darawk »

spookthesunset wrote: post #117
bhouston wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Proof of stake is implemented in tons of coins already.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#147

Post by IanCal »

dragonwriter wrote: post #142
IanCal wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It moves the trust to the code rather than the entity . Code analysis does not need to be done by all, either. I'm not saying it's the entirety of kickstarter but I think you're being overly dismissive of the concept. It could work well for things like bug or feature bounties, or other similar situations where having a company to sit in the middle and hold cash requires building up too much reputation than it is wort…

> It moves the trust to the code rather than the entity. Code analysis does not need to be done by all, either. For everyone who doesn't do it on their own, they either have to trust the originator or trust someone who has done it, so for most users you aren't eliminating the need for a trusted third party. > I'm not saying it's the entirety of kickstarter That was the upthread claim.

> For everyone who doesn't do it on their own, they either have to trust the originator or trust someone who has done it, so for most users you aren't eliminating the need for a trusted third party.

Which is a different trust model.

There are a few major things:

1. Not everyone has to trust the originator

2. It's possible for me to trust a third party which is different from the one asking for my money

3. It's possible for me to trust a combination of many third parties, given that any one reliable third party that cries foul would be enough

So there's a huge difference between "trust me and give me your money" and "trust that not all the third parties that checked the code are co-conspirators".

> That was the upthread claim.

Yes, but I'm not making that claim, and I think your statement saying this piece is "useless in isolation" is overly dismissive.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#148

Post by walterstucco »

ntemiann wrote: post #64

Community at HN does not like Wolfram; on the issue of Oracles/Human input @ cryptosystems, he is spot on on the solution as he has had first hand experience with Wolfram|Alpha being used as an oracle by smart contracts (the whole post is amazing btw): http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/10/computational-law-sym... And so it is with bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. The idea is that some particular thing that happened (“X paid…

So we basically have to put our faith and trust into machines that by doing computational expensive operations just for the sake of making them hard to break, will trade wasting a lot of energy for a little more trust.

The point is always "make it hard so it will be too expensive to crack it". but what if some country (or group of countries) really try to temper with the clock of the internet? Are we sure the won't succed and make all of us use it?

If consensus is only established by powerful AIs, the ones with the most powerful AIs are creating the truth.

Re: Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

#149

Post by iso-8859-1 »

runeks wrote: post #137
chatmasta wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says the merchant needs to do that work? Specialized companies run like exchanges (or payment networks) could run the nodes on behalf of the merchants, much like bitpay does today. Of course, then you're just back where you started, with a banking institution controlling payments. But perhaps it would be more decentralized than four big payment companies, and that could be a step in the right direction.

It’s not about work. Borrowing money isn’t time-consuming. It’s about the cost of capital, and the inefficiency of requiring a scarce resource to be locked up with no other purpose than lowering the risk of losing a week’s revenue from 0.1% to zero.

Why do you think the merchant needs to lock up funds? If his exchange supports Lightning, the merchant would never need to worry about the fact that transactions won't hit the blockchain (if nobody is cheating or losing connectivity).
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