
Smart contracts don't “simplify contracts" - thisisit
https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/951163120008835072
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regulation_d
The premise of the initial tweet is spot-on (though I think she gets lost in
the weeds a bit after that). People who think smart contracts are going to
simplify any substantial percentage of contract use cases need to the
understand the pain points of dumb contracts. The main reason dumb contracts
are litigated is ambiguity, which is not a problem smart contracts are
designed to solve.

Imagine that you have a contract to build a website for somebody. 50% up front
and 50% when the site is done. So the key word there is "done" right? (and
"done", here, can be a proxy for more specific terms, the principle is the
same) A smart contract is designed to complete the transaction once the bit is
flipped, but there's still the decision behind who gets to flip the bit. I.E.
who decides when the thing is "done". The smart contract is not designed to
deal with the ambiguity of the word "done".

So the types of problems a smart contract can deal with are those for which it
is feasible to reduce the terms to binary states. Escrow is a good example. I
can verify that x dollars moved into account A, so I will move y dollars from
account B to account C. But the number of use cases like this are a small
percentage of reasons you might want to contract in the first place.

There maybe some sort of smart contract framework that comes along to deal
with the ambiguity issues, but for now, smart contract use cases are quite
limited in scope.

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kc1116
Saying you hate BTC because of smart contracts doesn’t make much sense because
smart contracts are not a primary feature of the Bitcoin Blockchain. Also the
main argument that most Crypto haters have is “bitcoin is only good for
illegal stuff”. There are many many other blockchain and Decentralized
applications not just bitcoin, bitocoin was the pioneer. And if I take law for
example like the writer we all know these centralized systems are ripe with
fraud, corruption and illegal activities. Lastly there is no need to hate
Blockchain at all, it’s an innovative technology that can benefit everyone on
the planet.

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cantrip
Smart contract is a misnomer. Neither the author nor those she is criticizing
understand what a smart contract is.

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crb002
Smart contracts formalize contracts.

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Sangermaine
What does this even mean? Contracts are already formalized agreements. Indeed,
that's their entire purpose, to formalize and memorialize an agreement between
parties. The post in the OP is right: contract issues arise from human
interpretation and performance issues, not any of the simplistic automatic
elements "smart contracts" might be able to help with.

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kc1116
Yea your right maybe law isn’t the best use case still doesn’t make a valid
point. You can take the weakest use case for anything and rant about how that
thing is useless. Also sounds like OP takes the phrase “smart contract”
literally as in a replacement for normal “contracts” as if they were designed
specifically for law

