Smart Contracts
Orange County ACM Chapter, Sep 21, 2022
Alexander Kurz
Chapman University
Overview
Why are smart contracts interesting?
How to write and use smart contracts?
What is a smart contract?
Where do we go with this technology?
Why are Smart Contracts Interesting?
New Technologies:
Cryptocurruencies
Smart Contracts
Media Attention:
New Applications
Scams, Heists, Fraud and Crime
SciFi Becoming Real
New Technologies
Cryptocurrencies: prehistory, Bitcoin, 2011, academic, critical, satire … Silk Road …
Smart contracts: Szabo, Ethereum, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) … law as code …
Media Attention
I link below examples from the media.
How to separate the hype from the serious?
We can come back to this after the How and the What.
New Applications
Distributed Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) … NFTs … Metaverse … Facebook is Meta … Computer Games … Web3 … Fintech … DeFi … Transparent Supply Chains …
Scams, Heists, Fraud and Crime
Beanstalk cryptocurrency robbed after hacker votes to send themself $182 million, 2022. Exploiting flashloans.
Poly Network Hack Analysis, 2021. Exploiting bridges.
Escaping the Dark Forest … Ethereum is a Dark Forest, 2020. Can involuntary transactions be rescued?
More at the Molly White List
Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin: How Much Illegal Activity is Financed through Cryptocurrencies? "around $76 billion of illegal activity per year involves bitcoin (46% of bitcoin transactions)"
SciFi Becoming Real
I planned this slide, but then realized that I know too little about the history of either crypto or scifi. There is an interesting story hidden. A starting point would be the mailing list of the Cypherpunk movement of the 90s (which named itself with reference to cyberpunk scifi).
How to write and use smart contracts?
Example: Players guess a number and bet. Winner gets all.
contract PayAndGuess {
address payable[] public betters; //list of players
mapping(address => uint) public bets; //bet of player
mapping(address => uint) public guesses; //guess of player
function bet(uint guess) public payable {
betters.push(payable(msg.sender)); //add new player
bets[msg.sender] = msg.value; //record their bet
guesses[msg.sender] = guess; //record their guess
}
function disburse() public {
address payable winner;
uint winAmount;
... //calculate winner
winner.transfer(winAmount); //pay winner
}
}
The full contract on Etherscan (credit: Christopher Chang).
Example Scenario: Crowdfunding Software Development
Developers set rules of funding scheme in a smart contract.
If enough funds come in, project starts.
Pays a salary to the developers.
Funders get to vote on rising salaries or ending the project.
Source: vbuterin - Explanation of DAICOs
What is a smart contract?
A smart contract is …
a program on a "distributed computer" such as the EVM …
"running on" distributed consensus.
What is distributed consensus?
Distributed Consensus
Remark on Terminology:
distributed vs decentralized (?)
fail-stop vs Byzantine fault tolerance
Distributed Consensus (cont'd)
I will explain proof-of-work-consensus with the help of the following picture:
(image credit Satoshi Nakamoto Institute)
Where to go?
What can be decentralized?
Example: social media.
What service do centralized platforms perform?
Are decentralized social media more democratic?
Mastodon [1] [2], Center for Humane Technology, Buterin on Decentralization, …
Reliable and maintainable smart contracts?
Smart contracts and democracy?
How to account for renegotiation of contracts?
Robustness? Bankruptcy?
Governance?
Metagov, Bell on Digital Autonomous Authoritarians, Buterin on Governance, …
Is P2P software inherently open source?
How to finance and maintain open source software?
How to finance public goods?
How to make off-chain events available on-chain?
How to build and quantify reputation and trust?
Principles of distributed organizations?
Which laws should govern the web3?
Cryptocurrencies and money laundering?
Anonymity and data privacy vs openness and trust?
Smart contracts and constraints vs incentives?
References
Authorities vs the Public, Hierarchies vs Networks
Martin Gurri. The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium (2014/2018)
Wael Ghonim. The Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power (2012)
Psychology and Evolution of Human Cooperation
Joseph Henrich. The WEIRDest People in the World (2020)
Bart Wilson. The Property Species (2020)
Michael Tomasello. Becoming Human (2019)
Mercier and Sperber. The Enigma of Reason (2019)
Richard Wrangham. The Goodness Paradox (2019)
Kim Sterelny. The Evolved Apprentice (2012)
Jonathan Haidt. The Righteous Mind (2012)
Acknowledgements
Students: Luke Burns, Christopher Chang, Kevin Jeon, Ronan Kearns, Tyler Lewis, Sri Pranav, Subhash Prasad, Jun Yoon
Colleagues: Andrea Bracciali, Mohammad Hammoudeh, Gabriele Camera, David Rojo Arjona, Tom Bell, Seth Benzell
Concluding Quote
"In the end, computers plus networks plus people add up to something significantly greater than the parts. The ensemble eventually grows beyond human creativity. To become what? We can't know until we get there."
Vernor Vinge, The creativity machine, 2006.