Quote from: fellowtraveler on May 26, 2013, 05:44:00 AM

Quote from: waxwing

Quote

11. If Alice disputes (claiming the SEPA transfer was never received by Bob) then the escrow splits the silver grams between Alice and Jorg.

This is not a fair resolution method, is it? If the escrow has no way of knowing, then Alice is always incentivised to dispute.

Actually it was just an example. Since smart contracts in OT contain scripted clauses, this sort of logic is customizable. Therefore the market will be able to determine which contracts work best for which purposes. (And create the contracts they need.)

If it's completely impossible for Alice / Bob to verify whether a SEPA transfer has been successful, then reputation systems (I believe) will fill the gap. (Though I would think that Bob would have access to an API to verify whether he received the funds.)

For example, instead of routing your transfers through "any ole person" you might prefer to route them through a more trusted party, such as a "gateway" (to use the Ripple nomenclature) -- although in OT that would not be someone issuing credit, but rather, someone buying/selling coins or colored coins. Perhaps 'Jorg' is just one of such services. Also on OT, that Jorg will not be operating a server but rather, using one, just like any other user.

Perhaps someday soon, 'Jorg' will just be a bank himself.

Yes, I've thought about this stuff before. Reputation systems are good for lots of little transactions, but there is a subtle but important problem with this approach.

First, decentralization always breaks if the cornerstone of the system is trust in individuals/nodes/people. That's exactly how the banking system came about. People with more and more money, and more and more power, get more of the money and power because they're the only ones you trust to keep your money. People's trust concentrates in those "nodes". This is what we have to avoid in our P2P solution.

We need to make it so the trust is in the protocol itself. This requires public verifiability of transactions.

It's good that the contract is customisable, but if that ends up meaning that we only transact with trustworthy nodes, we get centralization.