The Idea of Smart Contracts (1997)(szabo.best.vwh.net)
szabo.best.vwh.net
The Idea of Smart Contracts (1997)
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/idea.html
3 comments
After a few months of diving into the technical details, I'm bullish on ethereum (or maybe I should say bullish on block chain technology). Any thoughts on it?
I believe that blockchains are a very naïve and expensive solution to a non-problem.
Consensus is simply not needed.
Consensus is simply not needed.
Relevant? Bitcoin itself has very limited functionality for smart contracts, but a set of distributed oracles could change that.
We're building such a system here: http://orisi.org/ and there's a whitepaper available here - https://github.com/orisi/wiki/wiki/Orisi-White-Paper
A similar system could be used for Ethereum as well, to bring external inputs into the mix.
We're building such a system here: http://orisi.org/ and there's a whitepaper available here - https://github.com/orisi/wiki/wiki/Orisi-White-Paper
A similar system could be used for Ethereum as well, to bring external inputs into the mix.
Another example, of course, would be digital rights management. Interestingly, DRM's high-water mark (from the perspective of those who insisted on it) began shortly after this article was written, when it was formalized by the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions. As the author would say, this helped to enhance the costs of “breaching” the DRM’s contract. (In the same way, laws against vandalism and petty theft enhance the costs of “breaching” the vending machine’s contract.)