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Then what's the point of smart contracts? If you always must have some form of repudiation/reversal mechanism, you might as well go with the traditional contracts.

You could argue there will be lowered costs in the happy path where nothing goes wrong, but I'm not sure that's valid since the underlying software still needs to written/supported by someone.

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Smart contracts can automatically execute code that makes transactions happen. With a traditional contract you need a third party to do that (or you have to trust the other person).

This allows for a lot more efficiency as people who've never met can make trades on an open market without having to involve anyone else.

One obvious point would be transactions for which the traditional legal system is not an option, like illegal transactions or highly secretive transactions. But yes, I think advocates would provide other examples of lowering costs.

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