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Right... that's precisely my point. The smart contract aspect adds no value to the arrangement, all it does is increase complexity and add the risk of stolen f

Right... that's precisely my point. The smart contract aspect adds no value to the arrangement, all it does is increase complexity and add the risk of stolen funds.

EdHominem 10y ago
Meat-space is no guarantee of contract-performance. It replaces one set of risks with another. There's risks of theft and mismanagement of funds in crowd-funding companies. Payment has risk - Paypal has frozen and seized many individual and project accounts, credit card companies are forbidden to let you donate to Wikileaks, etc. And hackers could still steal or burn some or all funds. And there's essentially no useful recourse here either. Sometimes the courts get revenge for us, but we're still usually out of pocket. And a smart-contract with shares would offer a ton of features "for free". People could transfer ownership of their support (and the perk it represents), for example. And users could have total control of their promised funds until each phase comes due, via an escrow with an agent they trust. As many people have noted, there was no need to pre-fund a crowd-funding site - it was just a novelty that people got silly with. A serious cloud-funding site could be a separate contract for each project. Without a single fat target and without any of the split-the-contract complexity. This DAO bug-bounty is encouraging simple contracts more amenable to proof.
- vectorpush 10y ago
  >Meat-space is no guarantee of contract-performance. It replaces one set of risks with another. This is a false equivalency. "Meat-space" contracts aren't executable programs that can unexpectedly, anonymously, and irreversibly drain your bank account of 100 million dollars based on a legal technicality. In "meat-space" the legal system would have very easily halted this insanity instead of forking the entire banking system to evade the consequences of a single agreement. Smart contracts provided no benefit but severe consequences when the risks materialized. There's risks of theft and mismanagement of funds in crowd-funding companies. This is another false equivalency, "theft and mismanagement" is always a risk when you're lending people money, that's not the problem; the issue is smart contracts which add the additional risk of random hackers stealing all your money with impunity, a risk not present in "meat-space". >* Paypal has frozen and seized many individual and project accounts* Irrelevant. > credit card companies are forbidden to let you donate to Wikileaks Irrelevant. > And hackers could still steal or burn some or all funds. And there's essentially no useful recourse here either. Sometimes the courts get revenge for us, but we're still usually out of pocket. This is totally wrong. That kind of thing just doesn't happen. If a hacker steals your money the bank has an obligation to make you whole and the courts will absolutely see to it that you are made whole, especially if we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. > And a smart-contract with shares would offer a ton of features "for free". People could transfer ownership of their support (and the perk it represents), for example. And users could have total control of their promised funds until each phase comes due, via an escrow with an agent they trust. I've already explained why it's not "for free", but you haven't demonstrated "tons of features". Escrows and agents already existed long before smart contracts, so that's not a useful feature. The bottom line is, smart contracts are an absurdly complex solution looking for a problem, of which some probably exist, but the DAO was not an example of one.
  - EdHominem 10y ago
    > If a hacker steals your money the bank has an obligation to make you whole and the courts will absolutely see to it that you are made whole I didn't say the hackers would steal it from the bank, but even so that wouldn't matter. Banks have no legal obligation except in a very few cases of certain types of card misuse. And how do the courts make you whole when hackers have sent money to Russia? > especially if we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. No, only if you're talking about hundreds of billions. Small and medium theft is ignored, large theft and incompetence may be bailed out if you'll take someone down with you. > In "meat-space" the legal system would have very easily halted this insanity This one slow-motion train wreck? Sure. Well, maybe. Unless the attacker had done something across jurisdictions, etc. Then it'd be years before anything, even freezing an account, could be done. > "theft and mismanagement" is always a risk when you're lending people money No, you don't get it. The point is to remove Kickstarter, etc. The projects themselves are still an issue of course, but that's at least the point of the exercise. >>* Paypal has frozen and seized many individual and project accounts* > Irrelevant. Not at all, it's one of the risks inherent in the classical system. Every third project has a horror story about frozen funds and that's not counting what the individuals themselves go through before they donate. >> credit card companies are forbidden to let you donate to Wikileaks > Irrelevant. Only if you wouldn't donate to WikiLeaks or a related project. But yeah, I can see how that wouldn't interest you. > Escrows and agents already existed long before smart contracts, so that's not a useful feature. Not trusted escrow, your funds could be frozen for reasons like donating to WikiLeaks, or simply stolen from the agent. > but you haven't demonstrated "tons of features". No, you haven't acknowledged them. You're a thirsty equine by a large body of water but I can't do this last bit for you.
    - vectorpush 10y ago
      > I didn't say the hackers would steal it from the bank, but even so that wouldn't matter. Well that's what I'm talking about because that's what happened with the DAO and what happens quite regularly to blockchain wallets. If the DAO money was pooled into a bank account instead of on the eth blockchain then the money would not have been stolen by a hacker - end of story. The banking system also has additional measures in place to ensure that large unauthorized transactions can be quickly noticed and reversed, even across international boundaries, I know this first hand because I've personally reversed international bank transfers of much less than 100 million USD. > No, you don't get it. The point is to remove Kickstarter, etc. The projects themselves are still an issue of course, but that's at least the point of the exercise. I'm afraid you're the one who doesn't get it, my point is that "removing Kickstarter etc" is of dubious benefit because Kickstarter style businesses work just fine 99% of the time without the added risk of a hacker stealing everyone's money with complete impunity. > it's one of the risks inherent in the classical system. Every third project has a horror story about frozen funds and that's not counting what the individuals themselves go through before they donate. Having your money temporarily frozen by paypal is not even close to the same thing as having it permanently stolen by hackers. > Only if you wouldn't donate to WikiLeaks or a related project. This has nothing to do with my point which is "smart contracts add risk with nearly zero benefit". If you want to send bitcoin to wikileaks, nobody cares, that has nothing to do with pooling your money into a smart contract. > No, you haven't acknowledged them. You're a thirsty equine by a large body of water but I can't do this last bit for you. This is becoming absurd. Your list of features is literally two vague sentences. 1. "People could transfer ownership of their support (and the perk it represents)." 2. "Users could have total control of their promised funds until each phase comes due, via an escrow with an agent they trust." -- #1. The utility is unclear. Why is this useful and why do you think this isn't already possible with a centralized system. #2. Smart contract is not necessary for escrow. Smart contracts do not make things better, they just add complication and risk.

Right... that's precisely my point. The smart contract aspect adds no value to the arrangement, all it does is increase complexity and add the risk of stolen funds.

EdHominem 10y ago

Meat-space is no guarantee of contract-performance. It replaces one set of risks with another. There's risks of theft and mismanagement of funds in crowd-funding companies. Payment has risk - Paypal has frozen and seized many individual and project accounts, credit card companies are forbidden to let you donate to Wikileaks, etc. And hackers could still steal or burn some or all funds. And there's essentially no useful recourse here either. Sometimes the courts get revenge for us, but we're still usually out of pocket. And a smart-contract with shares would offer a ton of features "for free". People could transfer ownership of their support (and the perk it represents), for example. And users could have total control of their promised funds until each phase comes due, via an escrow with an agent they trust. As many people have noted, there was no need to pre-fund a crowd-funding site - it was just a novelty that people got silly with. A serious cloud-funding site could be a separate contract for each project. Without a single fat target and without any of the split-the-contract complexity. This DAO bug-bounty is encouraging simple contracts more amenable to proof.

vectorpush 10y ago
>Meat-space is no guarantee of contract-performance. It replaces one set of risks with another. This is a false equivalency. "Meat-space" contracts aren't executable programs that can unexpectedly, anonymously, and irreversibly drain your bank account of 100 million dollars based on a legal technicality. In "meat-space" the legal system would have very easily halted this insanity instead of forking the entire banking system to evade the consequences of a single agreement. Smart contracts provided no benefit but severe consequences when the risks materialized. There's risks of theft and mismanagement of funds in crowd-funding companies. This is another false equivalency, "theft and mismanagement" is always a risk when you're lending people money, that's not the problem; the issue is smart contracts which add the additional risk of random hackers stealing all your money with impunity, a risk not present in "meat-space". >* Paypal has frozen and seized many individual and project accounts* Irrelevant. > credit card companies are forbidden to let you donate to Wikileaks Irrelevant. > And hackers could still steal or burn some or all funds. And there's essentially no useful recourse here either. Sometimes the courts get revenge for us, but we're still usually out of pocket. This is totally wrong. That kind of thing just doesn't happen. If a hacker steals your money the bank has an obligation to make you whole and the courts will absolutely see to it that you are made whole, especially if we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. > And a smart-contract with shares would offer a ton of features "for free". People could transfer ownership of their support (and the perk it represents), for example. And users could have total control of their promised funds until each phase comes due, via an escrow with an agent they trust. I've already explained why it's not "for free", but you haven't demonstrated "tons of features". Escrows and agents already existed long before smart contracts, so that's not a useful feature. The bottom line is, smart contracts are an absurdly complex solution looking for a problem, of which some probably exist, but the DAO was not an example of one.
- EdHominem 10y ago
  > If a hacker steals your money the bank has an obligation to make you whole and the courts will absolutely see to it that you are made whole I didn't say the hackers would steal it from the bank, but even so that wouldn't matter. Banks have no legal obligation except in a very few cases of certain types of card misuse. And how do the courts make you whole when hackers have sent money to Russia? > especially if we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. No, only if you're talking about hundreds of billions. Small and medium theft is ignored, large theft and incompetence may be bailed out if you'll take someone down with you. > In "meat-space" the legal system would have very easily halted this insanity This one slow-motion train wreck? Sure. Well, maybe. Unless the attacker had done something across jurisdictions, etc. Then it'd be years before anything, even freezing an account, could be done. > "theft and mismanagement" is always a risk when you're lending people money No, you don't get it. The point is to remove Kickstarter, etc. The projects themselves are still an issue of course, but that's at least the point of the exercise. >>* Paypal has frozen and seized many individual and project accounts* > Irrelevant. Not at all, it's one of the risks inherent in the classical system. Every third project has a horror story about frozen funds and that's not counting what the individuals themselves go through before they donate. >> credit card companies are forbidden to let you donate to Wikileaks > Irrelevant. Only if you wouldn't donate to WikiLeaks or a related project. But yeah, I can see how that wouldn't interest you. > Escrows and agents already existed long before smart contracts, so that's not a useful feature. Not trusted escrow, your funds could be frozen for reasons like donating to WikiLeaks, or simply stolen from the agent. > but you haven't demonstrated "tons of features". No, you haven't acknowledged them. You're a thirsty equine by a large body of water but I can't do this last bit for you.
  - vectorpush 10y ago
    > I didn't say the hackers would steal it from the bank, but even so that wouldn't matter. Well that's what I'm talking about because that's what happened with the DAO and what happens quite regularly to blockchain wallets. If the DAO money was pooled into a bank account instead of on the eth blockchain then the money would not have been stolen by a hacker - end of story. The banking system also has additional measures in place to ensure that large unauthorized transactions can be quickly noticed and reversed, even across international boundaries, I know this first hand because I've personally reversed international bank transfers of much less than 100 million USD. > No, you don't get it. The point is to remove Kickstarter, etc. The projects themselves are still an issue of course, but that's at least the point of the exercise. I'm afraid you're the one who doesn't get it, my point is that "removing Kickstarter etc" is of dubious benefit because Kickstarter style businesses work just fine 99% of the time without the added risk of a hacker stealing everyone's money with complete impunity. > it's one of the risks inherent in the classical system. Every third project has a horror story about frozen funds and that's not counting what the individuals themselves go through before they donate. Having your money temporarily frozen by paypal is not even close to the same thing as having it permanently stolen by hackers. > Only if you wouldn't donate to WikiLeaks or a related project. This has nothing to do with my point which is "smart contracts add risk with nearly zero benefit". If you want to send bitcoin to wikileaks, nobody cares, that has nothing to do with pooling your money into a smart contract. > No, you haven't acknowledged them. You're a thirsty equine by a large body of water but I can't do this last bit for you. This is becoming absurd. Your list of features is literally two vague sentences. 1. "People could transfer ownership of their support (and the perk it represents)." 2. "Users could have total control of their promised funds until each phase comes due, via an escrow with an agent they trust." -- #1. The utility is unclear. Why is this useful and why do you think this isn't already possible with a centralized system. #2. Smart contract is not necessary for escrow. Smart contracts do not make things better, they just add complication and risk.