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A comment on Nobel Prize-winning economist joins blockchain startup to fix smart contracts. Parent comment

Re:Nobel Prize-winning economist joins blockchain startup to... by colordrops on Thursday August 02, 2018 @02:56PM (#17674385)
Your comment is a non sequitur. Blockchains already depend on physical matter, human social behavior, game theory, and yes, the legal system. Mining farms require legal protection to prevent marauders from commandeering them.

An example of a blockchain/legal system hybrid is colored coins, where a token represents a real world asset. The legal system is required to enforce whatever contractual obligations are implied by that token. But it still adds value over a purely legal approach as at least ownership and transfer of it is transparent.

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Re:Nobel Prize-winning economist joins blockchain startup to... by root_axis on Thursday August 02, 2018 @04:12PM (#17675048)
> An example of a blockchain/legal system hybrid is colored coins, where a token represents a real world asset

Equally pointless. What if I steal your private keys and authorize the sale of your house tokens to myself for dirt cheap?

The answer is that it doesn't matter what the blockchain says because it is the prerogative of the courts to resolve these disputes.

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Re:Nobel Prize-winning economist joins blockchain startup to... by JumpCrisscross on Thursday August 02, 2018 @03:02PM (#17674443)
> it still adds value over a purely legal approach as at least ownership and transfer of it is transparent

It adds dubious value over a shared database.

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Re:Nobel Prize-winning economist joins blockchain startup to... by marmadukester39 on Friday August 03, 2018 @06:36AM (#17678704)
But someone always controls that shared database. Distributed ledgers continue functioning regardless of private or governmental change and are resistant to rent seeking behavior making them unsustainably expensive or ungainly.
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