Comment by joosters | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joosters | Hacker News Reader

The example contract is very vague and seemingly pointless. The stated problem is 'if the buyer pays before 1st April, then they own the website'. Fair enough, but usually you'd just deal with this without any kind of contract in place. We don't need contracts for simple cases of 'buyer pays money, gets purchase.'

A contract would only be interesting in the example if it was structured as an option: The buyer has promised to pay for the item by 1st April, and in return, you have promised that you won't sell the item to someone else before then.

How would this be handled? How would be example contract react if you set 'WEBSITE_ADMIN' to someone else prior to the purchase? Does the example contract mean that WEBSITE_ADMIN cannot be altered by anyone else? What are the access controls to this storage slot WEBSITE_ADMIN? Does the seller lose write-access to it after the deal completes? Does the buyer gain read access? If not, what's to stop anyone changing this value and breaking the deal?

The data for WEBSITE_ADMIN is set inside the Ethereum network. I think the term 'website' is tripping people up here. It's actually better defined as 'site with data' which can be accessed via the Ethereum APIs. If you are interested in playing around with the API calls, there is a Docker image for it. I put together a hosted version of this as well, so you don't have install anything to play with it: https://github.com/giantswarm/swarm-ethereum

Are you saying that Ethereum is a web hosting platform?

I think Ethereum is trying to replace the web (though it may [or may not; not sure] still run HTML/CSS/JS on top).

Ethereum is not a web hosting platform. It is not similar to Amazon's EC2 or anything like that. Conceptually, it is a single global computer that anyone can access. It's not the same kind of computer you're familiar with, though.

Programs on this computer can't be changed, and nothing can write to the program's storage except for the program itself. You don't have to trust a service provider to maintain their guarantees: it is impossible to break a guarantee.

These characteristics are useful for writing programs that coordinate interactions between humans. They're also useful for letting devices publish and access information about the world long after their manufacturers go out of business.

Entirely new kinds of software can be built to coordinate social and financial systems.

No, it's not a web hosting platform. It's a new compute/storage/network platform though. Primary feature is a consensus mechanism and built in identity management.

Here is a framework that allows you to easily try this in practice: https://github.com/iurimatias/embark-framework

The example is pseudo-code and assumes a future with smart-property domain registrars. A better example might have been a smart contract trust which is 100% doable today.

There are other examples under the Samples menu at etherscripter.com. Also see ethereum.org.

"The example is pseudo-code and assumes a future with smart-property domain registrars."

Exactly. That's the problem. There has to be a much larger infrastructure which handles ownership of real-world objects for this to be useful. There are already smart-property domain registrars. MERS [1] and DTC [2] already do that, for mortgages and stocks respectively. But they don't need Etherium.

[1] https://www.mersinc.org/ [2] http://www.dtcc.com/about/businesses-and-subsidiaries/dtc.as...

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