Hacker News Reader

> For example, the regular payment of funds from a grant could be set up as an Ethereum smart contract.

Not clear to me what problem this solves- but the result would be so incredibly kafkaesque that I can actually see it happening.

View on HN

I was thinking the smart contract part would just be the periodic disbursement of funds, nothing complex. The hope was that using a cryptocurrency and smart contract would make periodic disbursement untamperable. If smart contracts can be tampered with, then I see no point in their existence. The untamperability of a disbursement process for cryptocurrency would depend on the implementation. Maybe it's not possible to do that. Has anyone tried? Maybe the money could always be shut off at the source, but that could also take down all payments (something the Democrats are currently threatening to do). Bugs in such a system could be a big problem, they might initiate things that would be very difficult to stop. Ultimately the input to the system, the laws passed by Congress, would affect the correctness of the system. Laws are not always logical, which could be an issue, though they tend to get very specific where money is involved.

The law has recently changed quite a bit with respect to the very nature of a smart contract (Tornado).

I don’t think they’re very specific.

The lack of specificity was such that the government is now purporting to end “regulation by enforcement”.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com