Re: Trustless, Tradable, Reality-Based Contracts on cryptonote coins
As a general bit of advice, people tend to throw writeups in the trash when they begin with a number of strongly worded incorrect comparative claims.
The most visible (and seemingly most widely used) approach to binary external information contracts in Bitcoin is the reality keys approach: This has the oracles selectively reveal a private key based on an outcome. This is consistent ('reality based') and one can happily use multiple oracles in your thresholds, which meets your (IMO misleading) definition of trustless. The contracts are also tradable with the cooperation of all the parties (but not the oracles), which is indeed an area that could be improved. The key reveal approach also has other useful properties, like being private (used well, no one who isn't a party to the contract-- even the oracle-- can tell a contract happened).
In future writeups you should limit your comparison to a very specific implementation to avoid turning people off with "wtf, thats not right"; or better: focus on describing the positive qualities of your proposal rather than criticizing other things.
On a more technical note, ... are you really putting a URL fetch into a consensus rule in the system, what happens when a malicious site gives random results? WRT "trust" at least in Bitcoin the trust in miners is generally narrower than you think, and the consequences of violating that trust are more limited. (Also keep in mind you're still single threading your trust on that URL).
Cheers,
The most visible (and seemingly most widely used) approach to binary external information contracts in Bitcoin is the reality keys approach: This has the oracles selectively reveal a private key based on an outcome. This is consistent ('reality based') and one can happily use multiple oracles in your thresholds, which meets your (IMO misleading) definition of trustless. The contracts are also tradable with the cooperation of all the parties (but not the oracles), which is indeed an area that could be improved. The key reveal approach also has other useful properties, like being private (used well, no one who isn't a party to the contract-- even the oracle-- can tell a contract happened).
In future writeups you should limit your comparison to a very specific implementation to avoid turning people off with "wtf, thats not right"; or better: focus on describing the positive qualities of your proposal rather than criticizing other things.
On a more technical note, ... are you really putting a URL fetch into a consensus rule in the system, what happens when a malicious site gives random results? WRT "trust" at least in Bitcoin the trust in miners is generally narrower than you think, and the consequences of violating that trust are more limited. (Also keep in mind you're still single threading your trust on that URL).
Cheers,