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Comment by lottin | Hacker News Reader

No, the basic problem is ownership rights over physical objects can't be enforced without coercive power, but blockchains and smart contracts can't use coercive power, therefore they would have to rely on an external entity to enforce such rights. But then the system is no longer "trustless", "permissionless", or "censorship-resistant", and therefore we have none of the supposed benefits of blockchains but we do have all of the inconveniences, which means at this point we're better off with a centrally-managed registry which at least is cost-effective.

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This is a strawman. The entire ecosystem does not have to be 100% decentralised. There is massive utility in a trustless, permissionless, censorship-resistant contract layer connecting disparate centralised entities. A centrally managed registry would never be suitable for this task for a multitude of obvious reasons.

> There is massive utility in a trustless, permissionless, censorship-resistant contract layer connecting disparate centralised entities.

No, there's no utility in that, if ultimately enforcement relies on an entity that needs to be trusted and can override the blockchain.

> A centrally managed registry would never be suitable for this task for a multitude of obvious reasons.

Centrally-managed registries are already in use and have been in use for a long time, they exist in every single country, and entire markets depends upon them, but somehow they "would never be suitable for obvious reasons"? They have already been shown to be suitable, what on earth are you talking about?

> what on earth are you talking about?

I'm talking about a global, universal API layer supporting standardised contract enforcement and value transfer between applications. A centralised implementation of this would clearly be a bad idea.

If you don't see utility in this I don't know what to tell you.

> I'm talking about a global, universal API layer supporting standardised contract enforcement and value transfer between applications.

What does that even mean? How is a global API going to support the enforcement of a rental agreement? Or of a bond indenture? Who is actually going to enforce the contract? And what is the role of a global API in that? And what do you mean value transfer between applications? You want to transfer "value" (like a bag of rice?) between computer programs??? None of that makes the slightest sense. Meaningless gibberish intended to fool gullible idiots into thinking that blockchains are some kind of disruptive technology that is going to turn everything upside down. Nonsense. It's a pump & dump scheme, and little else.

Ignoring the condescending tone, value is already being transferred between computer programs. Trillions of dollars per year on Ethereum alone. A lot of the volume is undeniably speculation but denying that value can be transferred on blockchain is denying reality at this point.

Ethereum allows you to transfer digital tokens from one address to another. This is what it does. Calling this "transferring value between computer programs" is both inaccurate and pompous. It's like a truck driver insisting that you call them a "transporter of value". Nobody speaks like that. Your comments consist entirely of marketing buzzwords, which is unfortunate because this is a technology site and we're trying to have an honest discussion about technology.

I'm having an honest discussion. You have accused me of being "a gullible idiot", "pompous" and of using "marketing buzzwords" (which words?). You come across as being very emotionally attached to your negative opinion of the space.

Value can be transferred between programs through Ethereum. The tokens you mentioned have value, because people are willing to exchange them for money. So it's not an inaccurate statement. Web3 provides the standardised API through which these programs can communicate.

Don't twist my words, I never said that you were a gullible idiot. I said that using the term "transferring value" is inaccurate and pompous, and that you are using marketing buzzwords. And I stand by that, "transferring value" is an example of a marketing buzzword. It's not a descriptive term, because what is being transferred is digital tokens, which may or may not have value. Whether they have value is irrelevant as far as the technology itself is concerned. I don't have anything against you personally, but this is the way I see it.

If it helps you can read 'transferring value' to 'transferring digital tokens which have value on the market', the distinction is irrelevant to the point.

> Whether they have value is irrelevant as far as the technology itself is concerned.

I'd argue that it's not irrelevant. The whole point of the technology is, at risk of more 'marketing buzzwords', a decentralised way of moving value around (moving digitised tokens which have value on the market, around).

I had a look at your post/comment history. It's almost exclusively cryptocurrency focussed. I'm curious why you spend so much time discussing a technology you clearly don't think has a future.

It is irrelevant. An automobile engineer would not describe a truck as a "vehicle that transports value", despite the fact that most of the time trucks are used to transport valuable things. It's ridiculous. Nobody in finance refers to financial assets as "value" either.

Why are my comments focused on cryptocurrency? Because I like to discuss cryptocurrencies. I have thought a lot about them, and I think it's an interesting phenomenon from an sociological point of view. Plus, I like arguing with people who I think are wrong.

What if they could have that power?

Imagine something like Robocop hooked up to the EVM, if you put your RealID in the escrow contract and then the ubiquitous camera network is unable to verify that you honored the transaction, well then you have 15 seconds to comply…

I worry that this is the endgame; you say "distributed organisation", I say "autonomous cyberweapon".

We're not that far from having a DAO that can bid on zero-days and use them against a list of targets of its choice. If a DAO can make POST requests it can launch exploits. A script kiddie without the kiddie.

Sure, but if you had a sufficiently powerful robot you could also circumvent traditional means of enforcing ownership and contracts.

Blockchain governs the DIGITAL sphere and in there can actually enforce. People who are trying to combine crypto with physical assets are a shrinking number. Focus on digital and its absolutely enforcable, to an extent not even governments can accomplish.

Not at all, blockchains can't enforce intellectual property rights either. For example, how is a blockchain going to stop an individual from using unlicensed content on their website?

Thats not what is meant by it being enforcable.

You are confusing things here.

With enforcable, what is meant is anything that can be programmed into a contract and be executed will be executed (enforced).

That can as an example be someone raising a million dollars for a crypto game by offering 10000 tokens for 100$ each. The million dollars are going to be unlocked in phases. 50k for proof of concept, 250k for alpha etc. Each phase have to be approved by the toke holders. If they dont agree that the proof of concept is good enough they can vote the unlocking down and there is nothing the game developers can do about that. That is what is meant by enforable.

We already know what "enforce" means. You said blockchains can enforce "digital" whatever that means. The only thing blockchains can "enforce" is that data are added to the chain according to some rules. There isn't any type of property right, digital or real, that can be enforced in this way.

I already explained what enforcement means in this context giving you a very concrete example. Why don't you show how that example is not what I claim it is. Instead of just repeating what you already said.

I can't help you see something you don't want to see.

> Why don't you show how that example is not what I claim it is.

Because, quite honestly, I don't what your claim is. You're saying that a blockchain can "enforce DIGITAL" which is a meaningless sentence. Are you claiming that you can write a program and execute it on a blockchain? Sure. I can do the same on my computer. This is not an example of enforcing property rights, which was what we were talking about.

I am not talking about property rights and I am not sure where you are getting that from. So maybe you were thinking of someone else.

You replied to a comment where I argued that property rights cannot be enforced with blockchain technology. So, yeah, it's pretty obvious that we were talking about enforcement of property rights.

> Blockchain governs the DIGITAL sphere and in there can actually enforce.

how?

it's all based on cryptographic keys, if I stole the keys, how can blockchain block me, without someone intervening?

You are answering your own question by asking the wrong one.

This is only a problem if it's in fact enforcable. There are many ways to solve the stealing among others multisig.

you're not answering the question though.

the only thing the system can do is ask more and more from their users, but there is no way to know if the transaction is good: if it looks good, it is good.

so it can't enforce anything on its own.

a CC payment can look good, but it can be reversed because there other other channels, outside of the CC circuit, to prove those transactions are to be considered fraudulent.

There is no such mechanism in the crypto space, so basically they are good unless you have an issue that can't be solved by the chain itself.

Because the chain can't enforce anything.

p.s. note that I wrote the keys (plural) not the key (singular)

basically your answer is "have a multifactor authentication" but if that is broken by some malevolent actor, I can go to the police.

There's not true fro Cryptos, if they are stolen they are lost.

nothing you can do about it, except begging

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7dv4a/hacked-cryptocurrency...

I have answered it and again you are answering it ex. here:

"A CC payment can look good, but it can be reversed because there other other channels, outside of the CC circuit, to prove those transactions are to be considered fraudulent.

There is no such mechanism in the crypto space, so basically they are good unless you have an issue that can't be solved by the chain itself."

This is a feature NOT a bug. It comes with it's own consequences of course but that's exactly what makes it enforceable just like physics enforce its laws.

This is a complete FAILURE to enforce property rights. If by stealing your car, I automatically own it, that means there are no property rights whatsoever.

No it's not. You are assuming that the entry on the ledger is a person it's not. It's a thing. I can steal all sorts of things from you in real life and if you don't know I stole them, then they will be gone forever.

You are still not understanding what is meant by enforcing.

> I can steal all sorts of things from you in real life and if you don't know I stole them, then they will be gone forever.

You seem unable to form coherent ideas.

So ad hominem is your argument? Got it.

> Focus on digital and its absolutely enforcable, to an extent not even governments can accomplish.

The Winklevosses came up with an elaborate system to store and secure their own private keys. They cut up printouts of their private keys into pieces and then distributed them in envelopes to safe deposit boxes around the country, so if one envelope were stolen the thief would not have the entire key.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/technology/bitcoin-winkle...

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