Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

> As I mentioned in an earlier piece, these tokens are not simply "certificates of ownership"; they can be pre-programmed to behave in a certain way (for example, pay a dividend each time a predefined event happens).

I don't get how you can pre-program a contact to pay a percentage of your earnings. Ethereum is very restricted as to what you can program. I don't think you can just write "check stock price of X on CNBC, if X then Y..." Even if you could you would need to prefund it with Ethereum which would make the fund raising aspect kind of pointless.

> In English, this meant Masmej was selling digital tokens under his own name ($ALEX). The token sale would sponsor his entrepreneurial journey. Owners of these tokens will receive certain rights over Masmej's future income and career decisions.

It's just a promise to backers. I can't see how its enforced by a contract. It's no different than just having people send you money via PayPal and you promising to hit them back when you make some money. I guess easier to administer and track woh you promised?

And I don't see how an income sharing agreement is a Ponzi scheme. A ponzi scheme is current investors paying out to previous investors. This is just a funding mechanism, selling equity instead of debt

> I don't get how you can pre-program a contact to pay a percentage of your earnings.

You can't. Any agreement like this would still require a traditional, real-world contract to carry any weight. The contract would specify that the holder of the NFT is entitled to the benefits of the contract. Even in a hypothetical world where everyone gets paid on the Ethereum blockchain, the person could simply open up a second ETH wallet and collect payments there, because crypto wallets aren't people.

The unspoken catch is that these contracts would likely include a provision that the NFT is null and void in the event that it's lost or stolen. People entering into contracts aren't eager to give up their rights to hacks when they can simply add a contractual provision that limits it.

The NFT exists because it's a convenient placeholder to represent something that can be traded with commonly accepted (relatively speaking) tools.

A real-world contract would still be necessary to put any weight behind these NFTs.

You’re right, the personal tokens like one the from Alex are simply an IOU based on trust and reputation. Reputation systems are really interesting and can work for some things, but I’m not sure you could sell the equivalents of Bowie bonds on trust alone - and the whole point of smart contracts is that they’re supposed to be trustless.

So I think investing in future gains of a real world entity who can simply start over under a new guise or decide not to pay, without being able to enforce the contract isn’t going to work. But I’m not sure connecting current legal entities/contracts to onchain versions will be the answer either in many cases.

>I don't get how you can pre-program a contact to pay a percentage of your earnings.

Sablier[1] is a service that is like payroll management on ethereum. Employers can deposit your monthly wage and it will be streamed to you little by little over the month. If alex had this setup he could 'pre-program' some of these payments to his token holders

[1]https://sablier.finance/

theoretically, you could do away with the whole 'i'll pay you a percentage of my earnings' and just trade the tokens. The tokens would appreciate in value as your social standing did. It's a ponzi scheme like all coins are (i have alot of money in crypto) in that you are just looking for price appreciation on the coins before you sell them.

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