From Cryptocurrencies to Cryptocontracts

“The twin technologies of cryptocurrencies and cryptocontracts are going to turn contract law into a programming language”.

Excerpted from @ThoughtInfected:

“Essentially what we are talking about is a real democratization of contractual agreements. Whereas today contracts are restricted to deals with enough value to justify a lawyers time (mortgages, business deals, land transfer etc…), in the future there is no limit to what could be codified into simple contracts. You could imagine forming a self-enforcing contract around something as simple as sharing a lawnmower with your neighbor, hiring a babysitter, or forming a gourmet coffee club at work. Where this could really revolutionize things is in developing nations, where the ability to exchange small-scale microloans with self-enforcing contractual agreements that come at little or no cost would be a quantum leap forward.

For more exotic examples, I was thinking of what could come if such contracts were combined with the ubiquity of data tracking today. In my example above, you could set up a contract with my blog to transfer a micropayment to support the blog every time you refer to an idea you found on my blog. Similar payment contracts could be set up for knowledge archives like wikipedia where you might agree to submit a micropayment every time you use or reference information from the site.

If we combine self-enforcing contracts with the idea of biological data tracking then things could get really wild. Imagine that you are carrying a cell phone which measures your emotional state. You then enter a contract with an entertainment company to pay them a certain amount based on the intensity of emotion which you experience during the movie or video game you are using. Suddenly you would be no longer only figuratively buying an emotional experience when you purchase something, but you are directly incentivizing emotional payout based on a self-enforcing contract.

At every level our lives are built around spoken and unspoken agreements, yet the codification of a contractual agreement has been relegated to only the most important and expensive transactions. The emergence of cheap and plentiful self-enforcing contracts means that we can codify simple transactions and agreements. We will be able to reprogram our lives based on self-enforcing cryptocontracts.

The coming boom in cryptocontracts comes with its own risks as well. In a world where self enforced contracts will be an everyday occurrence, we must be much more careful clicking on those terms of service agreements which nobody reads. We are going to need to be well aware of what it is we are giving away. Similarly, we must each decide what we want to codify in our own lives. Although it may be possible, it may not be wise to establish contractual arrangements around romantic or family relationships.

1 Comment From Cryptocurrencies to Cryptocontracts

  1. AvatarMatthew Slater

    Really helpful thanks.
    You talked about how smart contracts enable things to happen, but how can they be used do you think, to ‘push intelligence to the edges’; to take back the power which lawyers and lawmakers wield over us?
    We understand now how bitcoin takes away political power from central banks who control the money supply. How can smart contracts to the same for law?

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