TimS comments on Are smart contracts AI-complete? - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 22 June 2016 02:08PM

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Comment author: scarcegreengrass 22 June 2016 10:01:48PM 3 points [-]

Just to clear some things up:

  • In some contexts, 'smart contract' is a misnomer: it's just a computer program that resembles a legal contract but does not interact with the government in any way. It just moves money according to agreed-upon rules. I don't think it's common to use both a legal contract and a 'smart contract' to enforce the same agreement.

  • In the specific case of the project known as 'TheDAO', the terms of service does indeed waive all legal rights and says that whatever the computer program says supersedes all human-world stuff. (https://daohub.org/explainer.html)

  • All of this stuff is so experimental that there's an exception to everything at this point.

Comment author: TimS 22 June 2016 11:02:29PM 1 point [-]

In some contexts, 'smart contract' is a misnomer: it's just a computer program that resembles a legal contract but does not interact with the government in any way.

Typically speaking, a legal contract does not interact with the government - only a very small percentage of contracts are adjudicated by a court or reviewed by any government body.

In other words, moving around money, tangible objects, services, and intangible rights is a reasonable shorthand for > 80 % of the things the law would call a contract.