RE: Ethereum: Deconstructing theDAO Heist

From: Thomas Hardjono <hardjono@mit.edu> · Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2016 11:19:59 +0000

At MIT we had 2 conferences in May seeking to address the legal/technical side of smart contracts.  These were well attended by some prominent legal practitioners and technical folks.

One of the outcomes is the creation of a DG (discussion group) on how to develop 3 levels of "languages" that allow writing legally-equivalent contracts. In particular, we need a platform-independent smart contracts description language. We also need a Legal Trust Framework to guide the operations of blockchain-based P2P smart contracts environment (something the DAO folks did not have).

https://www.w3.org/2016/04/blockchain-workshop/interest/hazard-hardjono.html

If there are sufficient work-items and interest, we may upgrade the DG to become a Working Group.  The link to the Blockchain and Smart Contract (BSC) DG is here:

https://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?title=Home&spaceKey=BSC

http://kantarainitiative.org/mailman/listinfo/dg-bsc

If your organization has lawyers interested in smart-contracts, then please invite them to join this DG.  Our first telecon call will be in July.  FYI Kantara allows individual to join and has a voting structure.

Best.

/thomas/

________________________________________
From: Daniel Bateman [7daniel77@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 6:40 AM
To: Tony Arcieri
Cc: Interledger Community Group
Subject: Re: Ethereum: Deconstructing theDAO Heist

On Jun 22, 2016 2:30 AM, "Tony Arcieri" <bascule@gmail.com<mailto:bascule@gmail.com>> wrote:

If you have a simple "smart contract" language that allows you to build escrows,

you can layer higher level smart contracts on top of the escrows in a way that's out-of-band from the underlying protocol.
--
Tony Arcier

I like this idea as and would love to see it explored further Tony.

Daniel

On Jun 22, 2016 2:30 AM, "Tony Arcieri" <bascule@gmail.com<mailto:bascule@gmail.com>> wrote:
I published a blog post today that talked about Ethereum's Solidity as well as Interledger Crypto-conditions:

https://tonyarcieri.com/a-tale-of-two-cryptocurrencies

Unspoken in this post is the idea that instead of using protocol-level smart contracts like Solidity that "live on the blockchain", if you have a simple "smart contract" language that allows you to build escrows, you can layer higher level smart contracts on top of the escrows in a way that's out-of-band from the underlying protocol. Perhaps others are thinking along these lines?

--
Tony Arcieri