Hacker News Reader

Perhaps an even more germane example for the crowd would be the use of blockchain to manage cap tables: https://balajis.com/mirrortable/

View on HN

Maybe I'm just too old, but I just don't understand what stuff like this is saying:

> A mirrortable is a way to take a legally compliant cap table held in a system like Carta and mirror it on the blockchain. It consists of an on-chain smart contract and a bidirectional interface that syncs changes made on-chain to the off-chain cap table and vice versa. In this it is similar to a stablecoin, which similarly links an on-chain asset like USDC to a legally compliant set of off-chain USD bank accounts.

It's basically saying the cap table is held 'offline', that is off of the blockchain, in a legally compliant digital place. There is then a copy of that cap table on the blockchain with a smart contract - an API if you will - to modify the cap table on the blockchain, which will then update the legally compliant one or vice versa. Not sure what the perks are here, but that's what it is.

Why is this useful? I assume it is, but I don’t know why…

Reply on news.ycombinator.com