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polynya
@polynya
Though well-written and inspirational, I believe this post fundamentally misunderstands Ethereum and blockchains. Ethereum's distinctive property is objective, strict global consensus, and absolutely nothing else. It's great for usecases that require strict global consensus, but it's impossible for everything else, because Ethereum cannot parse any subjectivity or rough consensus at all. As such, while money, contracts, governance, identity, law are presented as examples, Ethereum can only parse very, very limited forms of the above, where it's objective. In some cases, like governance or law, it's almost entirely subjective with negligible scope for Ethereum to help. 99.99% of economics, institutions and the like are deeply human and subjective, which Ethereum or blockchains in general cannot interpret at all. Indeed, we've seen many a times how forcing subjectivity into objective code has led to many disastrous outcomes in crypto. (Contd...)
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will
@w
I don't think you're actually engaging with what he's saying -- ethereum doesn't need to interpret most things directly, so much as provide a "hard" substrate to coordinate humans (and their interpretations, e.g. the legal system) one example would be an LLC vs multisig. The former might define certain rights for certain people, and then ultimately rely on the legal system to back it up if/when those rights are violated. The "multisig" can be right-by-construction (!!), which isn't at all to say it doesn't need human input to operate properly!
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polynya
@polynya
That was the entire point, to your example, you can't do a an organisation or a legal system on blockchains. The only thing it can replace is the accounting (including stakeholder votes) - which is indeed a great usecase for strict global consensus.
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will
@w
why can't you set up a legal/arbitration system on a blockchain?
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