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Comment by zacharycohn | Hacker News Reader

This is why smart contracts aren't nearly as good as people make them out to be.

I disagree. In an ideal Dapp, pricing is determined by the open market or with a strong oracle - nothing novel here. If the contract was audited and deemed secure, then a pricing error shouldn't be possible. Payouts would be automatic and instant, as determined by the contract or set of contracts. Therefore, even if there was an error, the platform itself couldn't refuse to pay out a bet because they don't have a say in it. Can't be evil > Don't be evil.

Edit: to add, if users saw unresolved bugs in the platform, the contract could be forked and improved or users could just leave. If code is law, and that code is deployed publicly for everyone to see, then nothing is left to the discretion of "owners" because the "owners" don't have discretion to begin with.

I don't quite follow. Are you suggesting that because there can be errors or misunderstandings in all contracts, the non-smart variety is preferable since they allow for human intervention when there's a dispute?

Yes, that's the usual argument against "smart" contracts.

What do you mean? A smart contract would force them to fulfill the bet, no?

No, because as has happened before, the developers just go "oops, we made a mistake in the smart contract" and nullify the gains of anybody who profited off of it.

That was only possible because the miners have united. It's not going to be that easy in the future or on a larger chain (e.g. Bitcoin).

"non centralized block chains" and other hilarious jokes you can tell yourself

Yea that's the problem. Let's say the smart contract accidentally burns the money instead of paying it out due to a bug in the contract code. No recourse.

Yes, smart contracts give no recourse when there is an error.

Whether or not that is good here, in general it is an issue. That is a large reason why we have courts.

You can program space for mistakes into your smart contract, though (e.g. no payout without final approval). Everyone would know exactly what is going to happen when.

In that case what’s the point of the smart contract in the first place?

Explicit and final agreement about the whole deal.

like an actual legal contract?

It was said that court decides, legal contract is thus ambiguous.

But inserting a human final approval... courts will end up deciding.

Yes, but this time, it'd be explicit, including details - who decides, how quickly, etc.

You mean like a legal contract?

I'm genuinely unsure of what you're getting at here.

A legal contract is not explicit. There usually aren't any details about any court and its procedures, any dates regarding the court, nothing. A legal contract is implicit - relies on the legal system (that is complex and changes often). Making a truly explicit legal contract is way harder than it should be - and impossible in most countries.

How does a smart contract with a human stage fix that?

There can be varying degrees of human involvement. The smart contract could say "a human decides" - and a human decides. But the contract could describe bounds that the human has, limits on how much time he has, etc. The point of smart contract is that if it really is "a human decides", it's explicit - and I wouldn't enter such contract. Instead I'd ask the other party to be more specific and integrate better escrow service that has more specific contracts.

So you want smart contracts with human elements in them so you can reject them for better smart contracts with less human elements?

I don't want anything, I'm just saying what a smart contract is - a 100% explicit contract that has many possibilities including varying degrees of human involvement - all up to the contract itself. People have different tastes.

There is no consumer protection there. No method to deal with contracts that are already mistaken.

Moreover, the best way I can think of to deal with mistakes in a smart-contract is escrow in something like a 2 out of 3 multi-signature wallet. This essentially elevates the third-party handling escrow to an arbiter. It seems like the kind of thing we'd want to be run by actual courts. Yet, having smart-contracts with build in ability of courts to revert seems to defeat most of the purpose.

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