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Comment by midev | Hacker News Reader

> You're assuming there's some benevolent God who can arbitrate who's right and who's wrong

Literally nobody assumes this. Please don't invent strawmen.

The point is, even with all the failings of the courts, different interpretations of language, and every other flaw, it's still better than having no recourse at all.

> There's fraud where people buy an item online, then claim they never received it and get their payment refunded while keeping the item.

And of course, the blockchain solves none of this. It just makes rectifying the problem far more difficult.

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> > There's fraud where people buy an item online, then claim they never received it and get their payment refunded while keeping the item.

> And of course, the blockchain solves none of this. It just makes rectifying the problem far more difficult.

Web3 stores would use an escrow service for physical goods where the buyer's money goes into the escrow contract and gets released to the seller when the buyer receives the item. In the case of a dispute it would summon a Kleros jury of say 30 jurors who would look at the presented evidence and come to consensus on an outcome. A lot of these problems have already been solved in a decentralized way but it's still early days so higher complexity projects take a while to come to fruition.

How would any reversals be decided without a benevolent God? I've shown that traditional finance can't do it "correctly". Apparently smart contracts can't either. Courts can't because the law is sometimes ambiguous and unknown before it's tested in court. Traditional contracts can't because people get tricked by not reading the fine print. I think nobody can except an imaginary benevolent God.

If you just call the boss of reversals and say "sorry I made a terrible mistake, please reverse the payment", how can he trust that you're not the fraudster yourself? Even in the case in this article, how can any 3rd party truly know that it was a mistake and not just someone pretending it was a mistake so they can get it back?

Blockchain solves the problem of chargeback fraud. It's one specific class of fraud but it's solved by that technology even if other classes of fraud are created.

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