Wow, I didn’t know smart contracts are supposed to actually ‘check’ that the real-world contractual obligations were fulfilled.

I dismissed the idea before, because I learnt about it from the perspective of programming language design, where there is the huge problem that these programs have to essentially be perfect on the first try (can’t roll out updates to a blockchain database).

But if you’re supposed to check reality, that program cannot exist in isolation on the blockchain. It either needs to check real hardware sensors or you break up its authority by delegating those checks, as is apparantly being done with those ‘oracles’.

But at that point, I do wonder why don’t you just ask that oracle “Was the contract fulfilled?”. Like, if you make a contract to pay your neighbor 50 bucks when they paint half your fence, and 100 bucks when they paint all of it, then the huge complexity is checking to what degree that fence got painted. The specific rules when which amount of money get paid out aren’t that interesting.

I mean, I’m sure there’s some contracts where the rules are more complex and the necessary information already digitally available, but yeah, I find it hard to imagine a scenario where persisting those rules helps to resolve most conflicts. Even with normal contracts, the debate is usually around whether the conditions for a rule were fulfilled.