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If you’ve ever written code, and if you’ve ever written a bug, then you will understand that code as law is terrible idea, especially when it comes to finance.

giantg2 4y ago
"If you’ve ever written code, and if you’ve ever written a bug, then you will understand that code as law is terrible idea, especially when it comes to finance." If your argument is that there could be bugs in the code, then how is this different from the law today? The legal system is rife with abuses and injustices. It most certainly has bugs as-is.
- pirate787 4y ago
  Indeed, bugs are a feature
  - LightG 4y ago
    LOL
- mejutoco 4y ago
  The difference is the judge that applies the law and looks at the context. Not that it is perfect.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    You could still have judges looking at the context. The blockchain would only be for the written statutes and code. Judges can also be incompetent. Just look at how magistrates don't even need a law degree nor pass the Bar.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
kingkool68 4y ago
Exhibit A https://twitter.com/0xfoobar/status/1517680400142716929?s=21&t=TNcpruuS6Q2DXoftSnkb6w https://twitter.com/0xfoobar/status/1517680400142716929?s=21...
- cableshaft 4y ago
  Yikes. Wasn't aware of that one. Thanks for sharing it. I like smart contracts but you really have to be super careful with them, and ideally they should all be audited by a third party before launch, to help catch stuff like this. But even that's not a guarantee crap like this won't happen sometimes.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    Smart contracts have two modes of operation: 1) Upgradeable - where an authority has the right to replace the live contact at any time and rug-pull everyone. That's not trustless, and it's no better than running an app in AWS. 2) Non-upgradeable - where you simply have a self-funding bug bounty waiting to get popped. Even if they're audited. They're not smart, and they're not interesting, to me anyways.
    - pcthrowaway 4y ago
      Re: Upgradeable contracts, there is often some governance method that removes the power from just one person, but there's usually also a time-delay, so that in theory at least, users of the contract can see that an upgrade has happened and remove their interaction with it if they don't like the new contract. This is quite different from having money in a bank where policy changes and government seizures or freezes may happen without warning.
OJFord 4y ago
A terrible idea, or just terrible in practice, and in particular with the current state of tooling and understanding etc.? For every lawyer relishing a loophole there's surely another wishing for a more codified less ambiguous language than even Legalese English. (I'm no cryptocurrency advocate, hold a small amount, have never written a 'smart contract', I just find it interesting and somewhat compelling. As an idea at least, yes I've written bugs.)
thowaway_420_69 4y ago
^ you will understand that code as law is terrible idea, especially when it comes to finance. Why are we relying on code for controlling Safety-critical system? e.g. Nuclear Reactors, Autopilot of aircrafts, docking of two separate free-flying space vehicles, and weapon of mass destruction launch and control machines. All of them use "code", is finance more critcal than systems which are kill capable.
- CJefferson 4y ago
  All of that code usually has a human override, and it can be turned off, fixed and upgraded. Also, it isn't (in the main) in the public and under constant probing attack.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  In the cases of those I'm familiar with, most code in the system does not need to be bug-free for safety, and the code that does is kept simple and heavily reviewed at the binary level. For most contacts, it is not financially feasible to use the techniques developed for safety-critical software.
- orwin 4y ago
  Well, nuclear reactor use dumb electronics overrides, and each time an operation is done inside, each operation is done with human supervision. Override mechanisms are regularly tested and used. If your override is not dumb/simple enough, and you rely on code, you have the 380 max. What are the override, who are the supervisors for cryptocurrency?
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Why are we relying on code for controlling Safety-critical system? e.g. Nuclear Reactors Because humans can't perform calculations quickly enough to compute math millions of times per second? Computers work well when there are a finite set of fixed, quantitative inputs and outputs: if x < 20, do y Many parts of law are a lot more complex and can't be reduced to such formulas. Suppose you're suing an employer for wrongful termination. They say your job performance sucked and that's why you were fired. You say it was a hostile workplace, and when you tried to point that out you were fired in retaliation. Go write some code to evaluate that. Let us know when you're done. Should be pretty exciting. Hopefully we can retain all of the judges and lawyers now that they're not needed any more.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I'm not sure this is convincing. If there's some actual benefit, then crappy code that can be iterated is fine. Anything you do today with computer code was likely done worse in the past with worse code. So what is the actual benefit of "peer-to-peer lending and pooled lending" that blockchain technology provides that makes it worth iterating through these early mistakes? I'd guess the answer usually involves dodging regulations in some way. Which isn't blockchain specific, lots of 'innovations' in tech or business are basically workarounds that let you dodge taxes or regulations or exploit externalities.
- antihero 4y ago
  The whole point of the legal system is that whilst it's defined as clearly as possible, there is always going to be some flexibility and interpretation, and a human element, so if someone finds a technical loophole but is clearly defrauding everyone they can still be put in jail. Of course, it isn't perfect, but the idea of law being absolute (as in code is law) is absurd as we lack the capability to consider every eventuality when we release code.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Yeah, but it's the absolutism that's the issue, not the buggy code. When designing automated replacments for any business process you have to deal with the same 'exceptions'. You could just accept "computer says no" as the desired outcome in exchange for the efficiency, and let hackers take your money because "hey, they beat the system! It's theirs now" but that's a choice, not a limitation of the tech itself. Unless the tech's only benefit is that "computer says no" or "hacker took your money" is final, which doesn't actually sound like a benefit.
    - zzonk 4y ago
      The problem is that if you allow overrides in the computer absolutism, corrupt governments will use these overrides to their benefit. And you’re back to the square one.
kybernetikos 4y ago
> code as law is terrible idea I don't know exactly what you mean by 'code as law', and I'm sure there are extremists that think smart contracts make law obsolete, but they are just wrong. Fraud via smart contract is still fraud. Theft via smart contract is still theft. There's nothing about having automatic processing of transactions that means you get to just ignore the legal system in your country. And that's fine, proper and good. Automatic processing of complex transactions is phenomenally useful, even if it doesn't make legal systems obsolete. Simplest example - with smart contracts transacting assets where the canonical record of ownership is on the blockchain, you can have a smart contract act as escrow for you, making sure that the transaction happens atomically without having to pay someone to hold the assets for you and release them once they have both. It is a better, more efficient solution than any that the traditional financial system has been able to come up with. In fact, it is exactly linking the legal world and the blockchain world that means that you can apply some of the same benefits of immediacy and atomicity to more assets in the real world. All that is needed is for the legal system to recognise blockchains as the canonical record of ownership of real assets. The real world legal system makes blockchain technology more useful, not less.
- thfuran 4y ago
  >All that is needed is for the legal system to recognise blockchains as the canonical record of ownership of real assets. Then theft via smart contract can't be theft because it acted on the canonical record of ownership. This also causes tons of other problems. What happens if someone loses access to their wallet? Now there's a house that simply can't ever be sold?
  - kybernetikos 4y ago
    > There is no external trusted documentation that says what the intention of the code is. No, if someone fraudulently updated a canonical record of ownership, then the legal system can provide remedies. If it were me, I'd write the smart contract to enable corrections in case of a legal decision but that's at the choice of whomever sets up the smart contract that provides the canonical record of ownership. Same situation for if someone loses their keys. All these problems can be solved with appropriately written smart contacts.
deebosong 4y ago
I am a laymen who is skeptical of cryptocurrency tech, mostly because of what I'm seeing (hype, greed, fomo, and apparently no real use-cases). If... crypto were to be able to reverse transactions... would that completely undermine the whole point of it and make it look absolutely stupid? Do you think the solution to irreversible transactions would be to then have some kind of algo that would then send back a mistaken transaction after getting checked by some intermediary checkpoint? Would that then make the whole point of cryptocurrency also completely pointless? What on earth are people dumping resources into all this as digital currency or even investment/ speculation vehicles if they don't address the irreversible transaction part, or try to compensate for it somehow? It seems utterly anxiety inducing otherwise, where you'd have to quadruple check, then quadruple check again, and then sleep on it and then quadruple check 4 more times before you do any kind of sizable transaction.
- tromp 4y ago
  > It seems utterly anxiety inducing otherwise, where you'd have to quadruple check, then quadruple check again, and then sleep on it and then quadruple check 4 more times before you do any kind of sizable transaction. That's mostly due to transactions being non-interactive. If the receiver has to prove their ability to spend the received funds before being allowed to receive them, then most of this anxiety disappears. Certain blockchain designs require transactions to be interactive in this way.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    > If the receiver has to prove their ability to spend the received funds before being allowed to receive them If I want to send you some crypto money in exchange for you mowing my lawn, how do you prove that you can spend the received funds? And if I accidentally send it twice, why would I care that you can spend them twice, unless I have some way to compel you to send half back?
    - tromp 4y ago
      > how do you prove that you can spend the received funds? You prove it by producing a partial signature for the transaction (a transaction essentially requires a multisig by both sender and receiver). > And if I accidentally send it twice You couldn't send it twice because the transaction consumes an input utxo. Paying twice would require two different transactions with two different multisignatures.
moron4hire 4y ago
Also, if you've ever been let off with a warning for some minor infraction, or had a generous client who ignored a late-by-a-few-hours delivery, or...

giantg2 4y ago

"If you’ve ever written code, and if you’ve ever written a bug, then you will understand that code as law is terrible idea, especially when it comes to finance." If your argument is that there could be bugs in the code, then how is this different from the law today? The legal system is rife with abuses and injustices. It most certainly has bugs as-is.

pirate787 4y ago
Indeed, bugs are a feature
- LightG 4y ago
  LOL
mejutoco 4y ago
The difference is the judge that applies the law and looks at the context. Not that it is perfect.
- giantg2 4y ago
  You could still have judges looking at the context. The blockchain would only be for the written statutes and code. Judges can also be incompetent. Just look at how magistrates don't even need a law degree nor pass the Bar.
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

kingkool68 4y ago

Exhibit A https://twitter.com/0xfoobar/status/1517680400142716929?s=21&t=TNcpruuS6Q2DXoftSnkb6w https://twitter.com/0xfoobar/status/1517680400142716929?s=21...

cableshaft 4y ago
Yikes. Wasn't aware of that one. Thanks for sharing it. I like smart contracts but you really have to be super careful with them, and ideally they should all be audited by a third party before launch, to help catch stuff like this. But even that's not a guarantee crap like this won't happen sometimes.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Smart contracts have two modes of operation: 1) Upgradeable - where an authority has the right to replace the live contact at any time and rug-pull everyone. That's not trustless, and it's no better than running an app in AWS. 2) Non-upgradeable - where you simply have a self-funding bug bounty waiting to get popped. Even if they're audited. They're not smart, and they're not interesting, to me anyways.
  - pcthrowaway 4y ago
    Re: Upgradeable contracts, there is often some governance method that removes the power from just one person, but there's usually also a time-delay, so that in theory at least, users of the contract can see that an upgrade has happened and remove their interaction with it if they don't like the new contract. This is quite different from having money in a bank where policy changes and government seizures or freezes may happen without warning.

OJFord 4y ago

A terrible idea, or just terrible in practice, and in particular with the current state of tooling and understanding etc.? For every lawyer relishing a loophole there's surely another wishing for a more codified less ambiguous language than even Legalese English. (I'm no cryptocurrency advocate, hold a small amount, have never written a 'smart contract', I just find it interesting and somewhat compelling. As an idea at least, yes I've written bugs.)

thowaway_420_69 4y ago

^ you will understand that code as law is terrible idea, especially when it comes to finance. Why are we relying on code for controlling Safety-critical system? e.g. Nuclear Reactors, Autopilot of aircrafts, docking of two separate free-flying space vehicles, and weapon of mass destruction launch and control machines. All of them use "code", is finance more critcal than systems which are kill capable.

CJefferson 4y ago
All of that code usually has a human override, and it can be turned off, fixed and upgraded. Also, it isn't (in the main) in the public and under constant probing attack.
aidenn0 4y ago
In the cases of those I'm familiar with, most code in the system does not need to be bug-free for safety, and the code that does is kept simple and heavily reviewed at the binary level. For most contacts, it is not financially feasible to use the techniques developed for safety-critical software.
orwin 4y ago
Well, nuclear reactor use dumb electronics overrides, and each time an operation is done inside, each operation is done with human supervision. Override mechanisms are regularly tested and used. If your override is not dumb/simple enough, and you rely on code, you have the 380 max. What are the override, who are the supervisors for cryptocurrency?
JohnBooty 4y ago
Why are we relying on code for controlling Safety-critical system? e.g. Nuclear Reactors Because humans can't perform calculations quickly enough to compute math millions of times per second? Computers work well when there are a finite set of fixed, quantitative inputs and outputs: if x < 20, do y Many parts of law are a lot more complex and can't be reduced to such formulas. Suppose you're suing an employer for wrongful termination. They say your job performance sucked and that's why you were fired. You say it was a hostile workplace, and when you tried to point that out you were fired in retaliation. Go write some code to evaluate that. Let us know when you're done. Should be pretty exciting. Hopefully we can retain all of the judges and lawyers now that they're not needed any more.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I'm not sure this is convincing. If there's some actual benefit, then crappy code that can be iterated is fine. Anything you do today with computer code was likely done worse in the past with worse code. So what is the actual benefit of "peer-to-peer lending and pooled lending" that blockchain technology provides that makes it worth iterating through these early mistakes? I'd guess the answer usually involves dodging regulations in some way. Which isn't blockchain specific, lots of 'innovations' in tech or business are basically workarounds that let you dodge taxes or regulations or exploit externalities.

antihero 4y ago
The whole point of the legal system is that whilst it's defined as clearly as possible, there is always going to be some flexibility and interpretation, and a human element, so if someone finds a technical loophole but is clearly defrauding everyone they can still be put in jail. Of course, it isn't perfect, but the idea of law being absolute (as in code is law) is absurd as we lack the capability to consider every eventuality when we release code.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Yeah, but it's the absolutism that's the issue, not the buggy code. When designing automated replacments for any business process you have to deal with the same 'exceptions'. You could just accept "computer says no" as the desired outcome in exchange for the efficiency, and let hackers take your money because "hey, they beat the system! It's theirs now" but that's a choice, not a limitation of the tech itself. Unless the tech's only benefit is that "computer says no" or "hacker took your money" is final, which doesn't actually sound like a benefit.
  - zzonk 4y ago
    The problem is that if you allow overrides in the computer absolutism, corrupt governments will use these overrides to their benefit. And you’re back to the square one.

kybernetikos 4y ago

> code as law is terrible idea I don't know exactly what you mean by 'code as law', and I'm sure there are extremists that think smart contracts make law obsolete, but they are just wrong. Fraud via smart contract is still fraud. Theft via smart contract is still theft. There's nothing about having automatic processing of transactions that means you get to just ignore the legal system in your country. And that's fine, proper and good. Automatic processing of complex transactions is phenomenally useful, even if it doesn't make legal systems obsolete. Simplest example - with smart contracts transacting assets where the canonical record of ownership is on the blockchain, you can have a smart contract act as escrow for you, making sure that the transaction happens atomically without having to pay someone to hold the assets for you and release them once they have both. It is a better, more efficient solution than any that the traditional financial system has been able to come up with. In fact, it is exactly linking the legal world and the blockchain world that means that you can apply some of the same benefits of immediacy and atomicity to more assets in the real world. All that is needed is for the legal system to recognise blockchains as the canonical record of ownership of real assets. The real world legal system makes blockchain technology more useful, not less.

thfuran 4y ago
>All that is needed is for the legal system to recognise blockchains as the canonical record of ownership of real assets. Then theft via smart contract can't be theft because it acted on the canonical record of ownership. This also causes tons of other problems. What happens if someone loses access to their wallet? Now there's a house that simply can't ever be sold?
- kybernetikos 4y ago
  > There is no external trusted documentation that says what the intention of the code is. No, if someone fraudulently updated a canonical record of ownership, then the legal system can provide remedies. If it were me, I'd write the smart contract to enable corrections in case of a legal decision but that's at the choice of whomever sets up the smart contract that provides the canonical record of ownership. Same situation for if someone loses their keys. All these problems can be solved with appropriately written smart contacts.

deebosong 4y ago

I am a laymen who is skeptical of cryptocurrency tech, mostly because of what I'm seeing (hype, greed, fomo, and apparently no real use-cases). If... crypto were to be able to reverse transactions... would that completely undermine the whole point of it and make it look absolutely stupid? Do you think the solution to irreversible transactions would be to then have some kind of algo that would then send back a mistaken transaction after getting checked by some intermediary checkpoint? Would that then make the whole point of cryptocurrency also completely pointless? What on earth are people dumping resources into all this as digital currency or even investment/ speculation vehicles if they don't address the irreversible transaction part, or try to compensate for it somehow? It seems utterly anxiety inducing otherwise, where you'd have to quadruple check, then quadruple check again, and then sleep on it and then quadruple check 4 more times before you do any kind of sizable transaction.

tromp 4y ago
> It seems utterly anxiety inducing otherwise, where you'd have to quadruple check, then quadruple check again, and then sleep on it and then quadruple check 4 more times before you do any kind of sizable transaction. That's mostly due to transactions being non-interactive. If the receiver has to prove their ability to spend the received funds before being allowed to receive them, then most of this anxiety disappears. Certain blockchain designs require transactions to be interactive in this way.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  > If the receiver has to prove their ability to spend the received funds before being allowed to receive them If I want to send you some crypto money in exchange for you mowing my lawn, how do you prove that you can spend the received funds? And if I accidentally send it twice, why would I care that you can spend them twice, unless I have some way to compel you to send half back?
  - tromp 4y ago
    > how do you prove that you can spend the received funds? You prove it by producing a partial signature for the transaction (a transaction essentially requires a multisig by both sender and receiver). > And if I accidentally send it twice You couldn't send it twice because the transaction consumes an input utxo. Paying twice would require two different transactions with two different multisignatures.

moron4hire 4y ago

Also, if you've ever been let off with a warning for some minor infraction, or had a generous client who ignored a late-by-a-few-hours delivery, or...