Dumb Contracts: Steem's New Best Friend?
We've all heard of smart-contracts. A smart-contract acts as a trusted middleman. It will force the deal or cancel it altogether. Smart-contracts are one of the best things about cryptocurrency right now. Smart-contracts in turn create smart money; money that does exactly what we want it to do in exactly the right situation. The level of trust we can put into a smart-contract is much higher than we can afford to risk on anything else. It's much easier to trust open source code than it is to trust random people on the Internet.
But what about dumb-contracts? A dumb-contract is simply the honor system. One person says they will do something, and another trusts that they will do the thing. It's not exactly ideal, but sometimes it's just simpler to do it this way. If the stakes are low then there isn't much to lose.
Proof-Of-Brain is the ultimate example of a dumb-contract. It operates on the honor system. There is no algorithm that can determine content value because content value is subjective and different for everyone. This subjectivity and accompanied greed creates a lot of problems for our little blockchain, but I believe we are at the forefront of great things.
When I first came to Steem I was amazed that we now live in a time where anyone can put information on a blockchain for free. Not only do we have access to a secure monetary system controlled by no single organization, but we can also run programs directly off of the blockchain. The more I learn about JavaScript and the Steem API the more amazed I become.
Did you know that every post (Discussion) on Steem has an attribute called 'json_metadata'? Any programmer can put JavaScript objects here. A JavaScript object can hold other JavaScript objects. It can also hold numbers, strings, and lists (arrays). We could be nesting entire programs directly onto the blockchain. Text is cheap.
Steem Can Evolve.
We can become the, "Honor System Blockchain." Proof-Of-Brain already depends on it, therefore we can create many other dapps that depend on honor as well. More importantly, we can begin to incentivize honor so that Steemians have more of a reason to play nice and upvote the best content.
Dumb-contracts are much simpler than smart contracts. It can take a year or two before a Podunk ERC-20 token is even operational, let alone any good. Steem can be the prototyping blockchain, where dumb-contract scripts are created first to see if a project has merit. If it does, THEN you can spend the time to make it smart (if possible).
What this platform needs most, more than anything else in the world (including SMTs) is an honor-based reputation system. We need our dapps to connect to this system so we, as a community, can determine who is honorable and who is a leech. I am working on this project right now. It's what I think about as I toil away at my pointless job that should already be automated by robots.
With a solid reputation system, everything on this platform will change. Whales will want high reputation and they will have to give upvotes to quality content in order to get it. We can blacklist all the bots and upvote-buyers in a decentralized manner. We can create our own trending tabs based on the decentralized subjective reputation systems that we create. I am working on this as well. This is the Wild-West. Anyone is allowed to do whatever they want, but from this chaos always comes order. We just aren't there quite yet.
Can a mortgage be considered a dumb contract? :thinking:
dumb-contracts are synonymous with verbal contracts. Some contracts are just contracts.
I get the difference between smart and dumb contracts, and I kind of like both of them because they both serve different purposes, online, offline, generally, with some exceptions maybe, and if I have to pick one, I may favor dumb contracts even as they can fail more and can hurt more, like true love can end in a broken heart, with a settlement during divorce, and maybe even death. Generally, smart contracts work as a default. Upvoted.
I mean that sounds nice, but what happens when someone breaks a dumb contract? Dumb contracts require smart people in order for them to enforce the contract via social means. In systems where there are varying degrees of blockchain knowledge, it becomes really easy for a small group of high-knowledge, high-power individuals to exploit those who are either less-knowledgeable or less-powerful.
It sounds good to be honorable, but how many people act accordingly in such a way when it is possible to behave in dishonorable ways that can benefit your self-interests and that you know you can get away with?
When someone breaks a verbal (comment) contract they get banned from the network until they make it right. I'll be splitting transactions up into small low-risk pieces. No one's going to spend a month building reputation so they can throw that all away for $1.
Yeah, but that requires a lot of high-character individuals to enforce, right?
I feel like it doesn't but I might be oversimplifying. It's a decentralized system where anyone can chose to do business with whoever they want. If people are worried about getting ripped off they'll set higher standards.
Nice work, keep it up.
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No it's horrible and he won't keep it up. It's over!
How do you incentivize honor unless your holding significant SP to do the incentivizing?
How would an honor-based reputation system work? What are the metrics to base it on?
That sounds good :)
I'm flushing out suggestions for the metrics, but the main idea is is that you can't force anything. It's all subjective.
For example, If I want to claim that haejin is a parasite, that it my right, just like someone else can come along and say that he's amazing.
It's a decentralized system, and it's bound to create cliques. Earning reputation in one clique may or may not help you get reputation elsewhere.
Having a high reputation in multiple trusted cliques would mean the community has come to consensus that you can indeed be trusted in one or more areas. I plan on linking multiple applications to the system so there will be many ways to get on the reputation radar.
The most prominent application for the system will be a content filter. This will enable custom trending tabs for everyone. We will all see the platform through a different lens.
They should turn Steemians into Pokemon cards, Steem Monsters, like instead of just one reputation number, like mine which was 55, and went down to 51 this week cuz I pointed out a Dtube flaw a few times and was downvoted for it. So, yeah, instead of having just one number. Maybe we can have other stats on our bio page.
Pokemon Steem Monsters Stats
I used to make playing cards of my friends featuring stats back in high school, a decade ago. So, I would want to go to your Steemit page for example to see a list of other stats. Like alternative reputation points or systems based on different systems, algorithms, etc.
Overall Score
Like, Steem could keep the overall score as the first one we see. But like you said, there could be REP points based on inner circles, groups, etc. Or other stats. Like Paper Mario, an RPG video game, which featured different REP numbers, like Heart Power or points (HP) and Flower Power (FP) and Star Power (SP) and maybe others, maybe like a Final Fantasy Game. Upvoted.
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