For those who wonder what the fuss is about, let me give a concrete example of the way smart contracts compel set paths rather create terms with consequences.
no, its exactly "terms with consequences", its just that these consequences are enforced.
But lets go through your scenario
It’s a Tuesday morning and you’re running late for work. You hustle out to your driveway. But your car won’t open because the biometrics on your Aviva watch have connected with the Aviva box in the car and decided, for opaque
Not opaque, smart contracts are public.
For example, here is the most used smart contract in 2022, its
Uniswap's v3 router, which swaps one token for another. Running this contract through ChatGPT will give you a plain english version of what it does; the audit (people should not be using unaudited contracts unless they are solidity masters!) will give you further information.
and unchallengeable reasons, that you aren’t meeting their risk criteria to be able to drive, which are embedded into the smart contract.
...the smart contract, which
you signed.
So you agreed that if these risk criteria were breached, you would not be able to drive the car.
For example, your watch might have identified a high proportion of alcohol in your bloodstream, or the precursors of a heart attack, or that your cortisol level is too high for you to drive safely.
Now you might think, "
bah, I only had one little sherry to calm my nerves cos I is late for very important meeting and I am a super afe driver who never has an accident even when plastered", but that isnt what you signed up for.
Or it doesn’t even have to be personal. Maybe the box has decided that Aviva have too much concentration of risk on these roads today and by the terms of your smart contract, that precludes you from driving.
Indeed, you might have chosen a car insurance contract that states that you are not able to drive in the dark/under -3C/when there nearby fire on locally.
Under a traditional contract, you might decide to ignore that and take the risk that you will get caught/die/kill someone and suffer consequences for doing so, but a smart contract will enforce the terms.
These things are possible and only possible with smart contracts.
Yup.
And there is a very significant power asymmetry when it comes to deciding the terms of that contract and the way those terms are auto-monitored. It ain’t going to be Joe Public that codes the contracts.
Why not? There are increasing numbers of no-code platforms where you can write your own contract.
I dont have a say in what my insurance contract says...I get a few choices (third party or comprehensive etc), but mostly they write, I sign. With smart contracts you could tailor your insurance to exactly what you want.
If you want to be able to drive in the dark, at -3C with a nearby fire, while drunk, stressed to fuck and on the brink of a heart attack, I'm pretty certain someone would take the counterparty risk, and let your smart car turn on the ignition, but you'd pay through the nose for it.
