Turns out that the smart contract is a post-it note stapled to the NFT and the marketplace can just ignore what the post-it note says because it’s not legally binding.
What they can’t do is trade with marketplaces that do enforce the contract. Originally it was enforced because if one marketplace stopped enforcing it the marketplace would be cut off from the Echo system but turns out that the 5 big marketplaces just need to agree to drop it and everything is fine.
No see it’s a lot more sophisticated than that. The post-it note is immutable because of maths or something, so what that means is that it’s capital-P Property. And because Property is a magic spell that binds even the old ones, and this spell is unbreakable, I own all these apes.
Okay, I assume this comment is in defense of crypto contracts or whatever? This is solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
I was exposed to many, many litigation cases in my time working in the legal system. The worst ones happen because contracts aren’t made or are sloppily constructed. I have never, ever, in many years of seeing civil cases go through the office, seen a single example where the problem was that someone had falsified a contract or there was disagreement about what a contract actually says. Contracts change all the time, so making them immutable makes them less useful to both parties.
Also big companies break contracts all the time, and they don’t get away with it by lying about the contents of the contract, they get away with it because they have all the money and all the power.
The same thing with money. Counterfeiting is a tiny problem with almost any currency. The real problem is theft, and the lawless, immutable nature of the blockchain renders theft absolute, with no recourse.
This is the problem with the blockchain in general - immutability solves a nonexistent problem and creates a much worse problem. The no-trust basis of the system attracts grifters because there is no way to take back a bad transaction. The only reason people believe it works is because they somehow believe that documenting transactions immutably will make them bind people, just like some sort of magic spell. That’s just not how the world works.
Your comment seemed anti blockchain in general and so I was replying on that level not particularly about the contracts.
Your claims all make perfect sense if you think or current system is acceptable, with some billionaires and others that can’t eat and police making sure it stays this way. The blockchain is about making the future better by enabling trustless transactions to occur without those things.
Current contracts are often held by corporarations and enforced by police. I’m a realistic person that believes climate scientists. I’m pretty sure if we have capitalism, corporations, and police (all things we need to enforce contracts) in 20 years it will be in a fascist, dystopian, ecological collapse context and I hope to not be around to experience it.
I’m much more interested in how to build a better world that doesn’t need these authoritarian forces, and the blockchain is a technology useful in this endeavor. I don’t claim that it is without flaw or can prevent crime.
immutable nature of the blockchain renders theft absolute, with no recourse
What recourse would be available in the dollar system that doesn’t mean somebody isn’t paying to make another whole? If someone stole my cash, or stole from my bank because I lost my ATM, who is making me whole at 0 cost?"
Also immutable doesn’t mean not able to be modified, it just means you can’t modify the past (lie about what happened). If you want to change something, it’s a forward change, with past states still visible.
You’ve said a lot of words but you still haven’t explained how crypto actually solves these problems.
Once again: laws, including contract law and currency, aren’t magic spells. They don’t have power just because they exist. They require the power of a state to enforce them. Crypto is the same. Just because you’re tracking transactions on a public immutable ledger doesn’t change anything about that.
Now, as an anarchist, I’m not saying that to defend the current system. I am saying the solution is to remove the actual power of the state. Crypto is only attempting to replace tokens of state power, with no attempt to address the power itself.
And yes, I understand how you could in theory make changes to a contract with further ammendments, the thing is that costs transactions. There is no such thing as a modification based purely on consent of the parties. That is a serious problem for their usefulness, which was my actual point.
You’ve said a lot of words but you still haven’t explained how crypto actually solves these problems.
That’s because it doesn’t, it wasn’t meant to. Crypto is not meant to be THE all-in-one solution that solves all of our problems. It solves a tiny subset of our problems, namely, how do we share a database without trusting each other. Other questions such as the enforcement of contracts is outside the scope of blockchain technology as it should be.
Right but again, that problem is not one that existed. The future is federation - communities working together based on trust, not finding novel ways to track who has & does not have resources.
It wastes a medium country’s worth of emissions every day just to count coins or write things down, and it doesn’t get used to liberate people it gets used for scams.
Basically the transfer function on an erc721 interface (nft) cannot have enforced royalty payment otherwise it wouldn’t support people transferring the token outside of a sale. Theoretically you could use some kind of interface standard or write up a different contract where users are forced to pay a royalty on any kind of transfer but then there wouldn’t be a way to transfer it without paying the royalty and basically no nft trading platforms would support it because under the hood you have to transfer them the token so they can sell it on your behalf once a buyer is found.
FYI not trying to shill funny pictures but I do know a bit of solidity so maybe someone here is actually curious about the limitation.
I thought the royalty payments were enforced by the contract?
Turns out that the smart contract is a post-it note stapled to the NFT and the marketplace can just ignore what the post-it note says because it’s not legally binding.
What they can’t do is trade with marketplaces that do enforce the contract. Originally it was enforced because if one marketplace stopped enforcing it the marketplace would be cut off from the Echo system but turns out that the 5 big marketplaces just need to agree to drop it and everything is fine.
No see it’s a lot more sophisticated than that. The post-it note is immutable because of maths or something, so what that means is that it’s capital-P Property. And because Property is a magic spell that binds even the old ones, and this spell is unbreakable, I own all these apes.
You have to see it in context and only makes sense for people who don’t wholly trust companies and governments to do the right thing either.
This is vs. “immutable because it’s in X company’s database”. Neither a database nor a blockchain can themselves enforce contracts.
Okay, I assume this comment is in defense of crypto contracts or whatever? This is solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
I was exposed to many, many litigation cases in my time working in the legal system. The worst ones happen because contracts aren’t made or are sloppily constructed. I have never, ever, in many years of seeing civil cases go through the office, seen a single example where the problem was that someone had falsified a contract or there was disagreement about what a contract actually says. Contracts change all the time, so making them immutable makes them less useful to both parties.
Also big companies break contracts all the time, and they don’t get away with it by lying about the contents of the contract, they get away with it because they have all the money and all the power.
The same thing with money. Counterfeiting is a tiny problem with almost any currency. The real problem is theft, and the lawless, immutable nature of the blockchain renders theft absolute, with no recourse.
This is the problem with the blockchain in general - immutability solves a nonexistent problem and creates a much worse problem. The no-trust basis of the system attracts grifters because there is no way to take back a bad transaction. The only reason people believe it works is because they somehow believe that documenting transactions immutably will make them bind people, just like some sort of magic spell. That’s just not how the world works.
Your comment seemed anti blockchain in general and so I was replying on that level not particularly about the contracts.
Your claims all make perfect sense if you think or current system is acceptable, with some billionaires and others that can’t eat and police making sure it stays this way. The blockchain is about making the future better by enabling trustless transactions to occur without those things.
Current contracts are often held by corporarations and enforced by police. I’m a realistic person that believes climate scientists. I’m pretty sure if we have capitalism, corporations, and police (all things we need to enforce contracts) in 20 years it will be in a fascist, dystopian, ecological collapse context and I hope to not be around to experience it.
I’m much more interested in how to build a better world that doesn’t need these authoritarian forces, and the blockchain is a technology useful in this endeavor. I don’t claim that it is without flaw or can prevent crime.
What recourse would be available in the dollar system that doesn’t mean somebody isn’t paying to make another whole? If someone stole my cash, or stole from my bank because I lost my ATM, who is making me whole at 0 cost?"
Also immutable doesn’t mean not able to be modified, it just means you can’t modify the past (lie about what happened). If you want to change something, it’s a forward change, with past states still visible.
You’ve said a lot of words but you still haven’t explained how crypto actually solves these problems.
Once again: laws, including contract law and currency, aren’t magic spells. They don’t have power just because they exist. They require the power of a state to enforce them. Crypto is the same. Just because you’re tracking transactions on a public immutable ledger doesn’t change anything about that.
Now, as an anarchist, I’m not saying that to defend the current system. I am saying the solution is to remove the actual power of the state. Crypto is only attempting to replace tokens of state power, with no attempt to address the power itself.
And yes, I understand how you could in theory make changes to a contract with further ammendments, the thing is that costs transactions. There is no such thing as a modification based purely on consent of the parties. That is a serious problem for their usefulness, which was my actual point.
That’s because it doesn’t, it wasn’t meant to. Crypto is not meant to be THE all-in-one solution that solves all of our problems. It solves a tiny subset of our problems, namely, how do we share a database without trusting each other. Other questions such as the enforcement of contracts is outside the scope of blockchain technology as it should be.
Right but again, that problem is not one that existed. The future is federation - communities working together based on trust, not finding novel ways to track who has & does not have resources.
It wastes a medium country’s worth of emissions every day just to count coins or write things down, and it doesn’t get used to liberate people it gets used for scams.
Basically the transfer function on an erc721 interface (nft) cannot have enforced royalty payment otherwise it wouldn’t support people transferring the token outside of a sale. Theoretically you could use some kind of interface standard or write up a different contract where users are forced to pay a royalty on any kind of transfer but then there wouldn’t be a way to transfer it without paying the royalty and basically no nft trading platforms would support it because under the hood you have to transfer them the token so they can sell it on your behalf once a buyer is found.
FYI not trying to shill funny pictures but I do know a bit of solidity so maybe someone here is actually curious about the limitation.
Thank you. This is what I wanted to know!