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Comment by Vlad Prykhodko (vlad-prykhodko) on Book Review: Working With Contracts · 2020-09-23T21:31:22.597Z · LW · GW

Look up ethereum smart contracts, algorand TEAL stateful contracts. I think the area you are stumbling into Is Turing-complete smart contracts blockchains. After all it seems to me that the main issue of blockchain is consensus, specifically consensus among every node as to the content of the blockchain. Thanks to virtual software environments running directly on top of the consensus algorithms of these public networks, we can program a contract that will execute an action once conditions agreed upon by the network through the consensus algorithm are met.

Thanks to technologies like Chainlink and QR codes we can verify the states of real world objects as well as data sets outside the blockchain network and align them to states on the blockchain. This the blockchain acts as a sort of digital map of some Aspect of either the real world or the mental map of the programmer(s) involves in making smart contracts. And even more impressive, some smart contracts are actually frameworks for non-technical individuals to form their own smart contracts that will be verified and enforced via public consensus.

A fun experiment to check out is tokensets, which enable me to invest into trading and interest-farming strategies of dozens Of real life traders without ever giving up my name, social, or even an email! The contract is set up such that each trading strategy that a trader launches generates an empty tokenized pool. Anyone is able to buy any fraction of a share in said pool by paying into it with a crypto of their choice. This crypto is then rebalanced according to the settings the trader has set based on his analyses of the market. My hardware wallet holds the number of shares I own relative to the size of the pool, So I am always able to cash out my proportion of the fund and redeem it for the underlying assets or an asset of my choice.

I think even more broadly the idea of consensus algorithms and the parallels that can be drawn between online trustless digital consensus and the alternative system of today that is the Rule of Law. I honestly think it could be the dawn of a new era, where humans express the substance of their business and high-worth personal interactions not through ambiguous human language, but through absolute and perfectly repeatable language of computers. After all the Rule if Law in my opinion could be inadequate once the deals involved in a contract reach certain magnitudes. Say in the future when entities discuss mining rights to asteroids with quadrillions of today’s dollars Worth of minerals and metals, I don’t think they’d wanna secure them in ways that could later be scrutinized and disputed in human courts, knowing how fallible humans are to bribery and weakness of will.

I would absolutely love some additional input on this as my knowledge is that of a simple avid watcher and investor of various crypto currencies and the overall developments taking place in the field.