Bitcoin Forum

In a previous post (So what's the deal with smart contracts? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1468984)), I questioned what smart contracts may do any good to humanity, and the only valid answer was about their use in gambling. Ponzi schemes might be another use. However, I hope you will also agree that those use cases are far from being revolutionary.

Now let's ask the same for Slock.it. What's the deal with it, I mean, in what ways does Slock.it serve better than its centralized counterparts, apart from enabling payments to be made in a cryptocurrency? Payments are already doable in cryptocurrencies via certain payment processors. So let's say an alternative Slock.it builds gadgets which work in a centralized way, and at the same allows bitcoin payments.

You want to rent your car in an automated way? Install that PayPal/BitPay integrated gadget to your car, or get it installed in this or that way. What does Slock.it offer better than this alternative?

Thank you for your answers in advance,

Jian

Post Script

slock.it white paper : https://download.slock.it/public/DAO/WhitePaper.pdf

So what's the deal with it?

Could be something big, or not.  Could be ahead of its time, or nothing.

Do you mean people are throwing money to a project which has equal possibilities for being big or worthless, without knowing the potential ahead? I don't think so. At least, I don't want to believe that. What I want is someone to explain what it could be done with Slock.it which renders it a revolutionary project.

Yup.  The same with people who threw money into Ethereum.  Or with Bitcoin for that matter.

@tokeweed,

Bitcoin has at least one real use case which proves better than its traditional counterparts, that is, sending money with low costs and with increased security, anonymity and transparency. So I believe it would be wrong to equate Slock.it with Bitcoin.

Best,

Jian

That wasn't the case back in 2010 - 2011 when some people were buying BTC in huge chunks because they believed in its potential.

@tokeweed,

I strongly disagree. The implications regarding the abovementioned use case of Bitcoin exist even in Satoshi's paper. The fact that the potential was actualized much later does not change anything. If someone could come up with a real use case potential, even if that potential be just an idea, the answer is valid. Then that would mean people do not just throwing money to a project with no known possible use case, but they throw money to a potentially cool one.

I think we need to distinguish between different kinds of believing in a project's potential. One may believe in a project blindly, or one may believe in a project by knowing its potential. People may even believe that the outcome of a "head or tails" game will be heads, and put their money into that bet. So my question is, what type of believers are the Slock.it believers?

Best,

Jian

Sure.  But did everyone even realize that it could be possible?  I believe only a small group of people did at that point.  So all in all, as far as the whole of crypto is concerned, there's still only a small group of people who really believes that cryptocurrencies is the way of the future.  But then again, like anything, it might not be.

"real use case potential..." I would enjoy to see this on the table. :)

I think the slock.it idea is bigger than we give it credit for. Many universities already have electronic locks, that are opened and closed with programmable chips. This makes granting people access to certain rooms but not to others incredibly easy, or sometimes even possible, since you would've needed a bunch of keys for different rooms, now you only need one.
In a single Building, slock.it is not really necessary. When you leave the building and you want to use it for AirBnB flats, rental cars, shared storage units and whatnot, the idea of being able to lock and unlock something with a passphrase and/or your phone becomes VERY interesting. It the slock.it guys do it right, this will be technology that is pretty much invisible, because it is nearly in everything. You want to receive a parcel, but you are not home? The delivery guy puts it in a designated box near your home, sends you the passphrase to open the box and you can pick it up using you phone. This is not technology for an end user, this is stuff other companies use to manage access permissions.
Whether or not it needs to be decentralized… Well, I don't know. I have the feeling, at this point it is more a philosophical question, than anything else.

@ttookk,

I also appreciate the idea of building a software to make everything easier regarding such renting operations. What I don't understand is the superiority of a decentralized application over its possible centralized counterparts.

A single keychain suitable for many different keys, that's a great idea. But this would be a revolutionary protocol only if the underlying technology sustains widespread adoption, and this has nothing to do with that technology's being decentralized. A closed-sourced mobile app would achieve the same feasibility if mainstream adoption is sustained.

Best,

Jian

To be really quick, decentralization in this matter observe quite a few advantage over centralised airbnb uber or other peer to peer service that cannot even exist in a centralised way. Indeed, imagine you could pay your airbnb per hour minute and sec thanks to the acuracy of the blockchain technology. Moreover, the incentive for massadoption is that instead of being taxed at around 30% in this case by airbnb, the transaction cost would only be around 5%.

What is trying to build slock.it is an ethereum computer, which would literally allow any user to sell it's 4g data, wifi connection, electricty and whatever you can imagine. this is made possible through the much more efficient blockchain technology, centralised companies and database could not provide such service.

I hope i was clear, i tried to explain quickly and strongly advice you to read slock.it whitepaper that is not that long.  :D

I havn't really seen this discussed much, but IMO Slock.it's ideas are not really all that new. It is IoT backbone infrastructure with the plan to sell things that run on it.

There is a Bitcoin company called 21 Inc that you may have heard of. They raised $120m in venture capital and they are doing this exact same kind of work.

https://21.co/buy/ - scroll to the bottom where it says "BUILD BITCOIN APPS"
http://www.coindesk.com/21-proof-concept-bitcoin-iot/
This is the same kind of stuff that Slock.it wants to do.

21 Inc created a "Bitcoin computer" based on a Raspberry Pi that basically runs a full Bitcoin node, and now is creating applications that run on top of that computer.

Slock.it wants to create an "Ethereum Computer" that is similar, but then open source the reference design for it so that the market can be flooded with these devices.

The main difference between these stack implementations is that Bitcoin requires separate applications running on top of the blockchain whereas Ethereum can use smart contracts on the blockchain to obtain the same functionality. Thats a pretty big advantage.

Slock.it is proposing to build what they are calling the "Universal Sharing Network" that is basically a bunch of smart contracts that the DAO will own and this will provide an API that devices can autonomously communicate with.

This is the moonshot. Provide the entire backbone of the IoT industry.

Yeah, that is the million dollar question. And as I said, I think at this point, it is more a philosophical question than anything else. But maybe that is actually enough.

Of course, you have the tinfoil-hat guys ranting about how centralization is bad and you have to trust a single entity that shouldn't be trusted, but if we are honest, the internet a) works great with the "centralized" server infrastructure it is built upon, and b) is not as centralized as people make it out to be, plus the main incentive keeping these "centralized" networks running is the same that is utilized for blockchains: Money. As long as something is profitable, I don't fear them shutting it down. That counts for traditional infrastructure as well as blockchains.

Then again, the idea of having a decentralized Internet/decentralized services intrigues me. The best we can hope for, is that you don't even notice a difference, at least in the beginning. Later on – we will see. At the very least, competition breeds innovation.

@sandiman,

There are two decentralizations here.

1) The decentralization of the payment.

2) The decentralization of the renting application.

Let's try to understand how Slock.it operates through an example you give, someone's renting their Wi-Fi connection to someone else. The decentralization of the payment is already possible with bitcoin, and it amounts to an increased efficiency in many aspects, which I suppose we all agree on. The second decentralization, that is, the decentralization of the renting application, on the other hand, seems to be a bit controversial.

Your argument is based on the view that "Centralized companies and databases could not provide such services" to handle that much data. However, there are ways to handle big data without the help of the blockchain technology.

Going on with our example, Alice wants to rent her Wi-Fi connection to his neighbor Bob, let's say. Then, Alice may set up a closed-sourced propriety software which would allow to share her Wi-Fi access with Bob in return of bitcoin payments. No centralized database is needed in this scenario, and it should actually be the case that trying to put all the renting operations into one global blockchain is way less efficient than setting up such a system.


@Sark,

Continuing with the above example, the software Alice uses could be used by anyone willing to share their Wi-Fi access, so there is only one application for one purpose. And if someone wants to rent their car, then another application will be needed. As far as I understand, it goes the same as Slock.it. So I couldn't understand your point when you say "Bitcoin requires separate applications running on top of the blockchain whereas Ethereum can use smart contracts on the blockchain to obtain the same functionality."

And all the more so, handling transactions with the help of separate applications should be more efficient than trying to handle the entire renting operations of the World through one blockchain, shouldn't it?


@ttookk,

Although the idea of decentralized smart contracts intrigues me as well, I am at the same time suspicious about what the deal is with them, as the OP title goes. And it is not the same with Bitcoin or the Waves platform. Their potential benefit is obvious even before the idea is actualized. So if you say that it is just a philosophical decision to choose the way of smart contracts or not, then I would like to ask you if you think the same for Bitcoin.


Best,

Jian

In a way, I do. Money is basically a belief system, as is Bitcoin. The fact, that many people believe it has value, makes it work. But that's probably a little cheaty answer ;)
I am not sure, whether we are actually still in the "nice, but what is it good for?" phase. Lot's of inventions started that way. Lot's of them succeeded, but more of them failed.

There is a good chance that blockchains will suffer the same fate than the wankel engine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine

A definitive advantage over traditional infrastructure I see in blockchains is the fact, that they are very tamper-proof. If you want something that can't be stopped by a central entity, blockchains are a good solution. But this raises the question why companies should have an incentive to use them, since they would basically give up part of their influence/power.

for some reason, I have to think of the open source/freeware scene a lot, when thinking of all this…

That's not much of an answer at the moment…

Why would people use one different application for renting their car, their house, wifi, etc when they could do it through one ? and in your exemple, when do we know when bob should pay alice without the smart contract ?

@sandiman,

With Slock.it, will people use exactly the same piece of code for renting cars and renting their Wi-Fi access? I thought there would be different measuring software units for each purpose. For instance, when renting a Wi-Fi access, the unit may measure the bytes transferred, and when renting a car, the unit may measure the distance traveled. If it is in any way possible to use the exact same smart contract for such different purposes, then it should also be possible to code a software that could be used for different cases.

As for your second concern, for each 1 MB transferred to Bob, the software may ask for a payment, whose failure would block his further access.


@ttookk,

In which acceptable economical theory "money" is considered simply as a belief system?

As I have already written above, I strongly disagree that Bitcoin ever underwent a "nice, but what is it good for?" phase. Its real use cases were envisaged even in Satoshi's paper. And I am asking whether such real use cases exist for Slock.it?


Best,

Jian

Hm, maybe "belief system" is not the right word, but when I sell something today, I trust that I am able to buy something with it tomorrow, despite the thing "money" having no intrinsic/functional value. That's what I tried to say.

slock.it is just another insider cash cow piggybacked off the ETH craze

the "ethernum computer" is a fucking joke, how they gonna run that chain on a PI type device? lmao

without a sidechain system of some sort, eth is so fucked, the bloat will kill anything, as more crap get built on it

that's just imo.  slock.it guy looks like a fucking con too hahha, greasy guy, shiny suit, shit talk everything but his own project (close minded guy)

i mean go ahead, stack 7000 eth in mist, see what happens. https://forum.daohub.org/t/urgent-buying-dao-using-mist-has-hacked/1742
or better yet leave it at gatecoin, it MUST be safe there right?    http://www.coindesk.com/digital-currency-exchange-gatecoin-reportedly-loses-customer-funds-hack/


these guys are playing noobs that don't understand enough to see it.     THE new age con-men

@ttookk,

Money actually has a functional value. You can pay your taxes to a government only by using the government's legal tender or something convertible to it. Whether you believe it is just a piece of paper or not, the police will make you believe. So it has an armed force behind its value. Thus, it is not essentially a TRUST in "you CAN pay with it", but an OBLIGATION that "you MUST pay with it" which gives the value to money.

But let's just skip this issue. I think the essence of money has not so much to do with the use cases of Slock.it. As far as the explanations given under this thread go, there is an obvious difference between Bitcoin and Slock.it as for their usability. We had known how bitcoins could be used even before the 0.0.1 version of Bitcoin's core. On the other hand, we are yet to know how Slock.it will be a better alternative to its possible centralized counterparts even after the investment pool to back it has risen more than 100 million USD.

Best,

Jian

the use case for BTC is you can have a ledger that you base your life decisions around (or  % of that ) which has a predicatable supply and cannot be interfered with by state powers.

Thats a pretty powerful use case as it arbitrages out a hell of a lot of inefficiencies that are inherent in central gov, monetary regulation simly because thier is no real way for the market to effectively discipline central gov and banks under a fiat system. They just print more money and your value evaporates.

BTC also has inefficiencies, but that are of a different kind and much less inmho than Central govs.

DAO, $ 108.21 M, what do you think, guys?

I think it is an inflated number. And I think if they dump the ETH in the market to get BTCs, then dump all this BTCs to get USD, they will take a fraction far from this hundred million.

Considering there is no convincing answer as to what possible use cases there might be in reality in the future based on smart contracts apart from P2P gambling, it seems The DAO's profit opportunities will be so limited that it will be hard to achieve a satisfactory return on investment for a nine-figure capital. So there are three possible routes as far as it can be seen with the limited knowledge we now have. First, the ICO bubble continues up to a point where the original The DAO investors are happy enough with the results to cash out the profits, which would mark the end of the ICO bubble, leaving the "greater fools" with broken hopes, just as in a Ponzi scheme. The second alternative is that the ICO bubble is already so close to its peak that even the original The DAO investors will not be able to get out from the train before the crash. I see this as a less possible scenario because of the marketing resources the insiders have, and depending on the fraction of The DAO's nine-figure capital to the velocity of the ongoing angel/VC investments made in the financial ecosystem based on the blockchain technology. The third route, which is in my eyes even less likely to be taken, is that there is actually a potential in the smart contracts technology awaiting for Deus ex machina. In this route, it should be expected that The DAO will prove to be a stable decentralized collective investment scheme.

https://forum.daohub.org/t/slock-it-proposal-1-discussion-thread/539
https://download.slock.it/public/DAO/WhitePaper.pdf

Please do some reading before conjecturing any outcome of the DAO. Moreover, do not make assumption on the DAO possible outcome only through slock.it, there is only one proposal to come, and much more ethereum project are on their way to according to mr. tual.

@sandiman,

I've arrived at the above conclusion not by only looking at Slock.it. There's another thread for smart contracts in general as well: So what's the deal with smart contracts? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1468984)

I've read the The DAO whitepaper, though couldn't find much information about the issues I care. I am not very into the technical specifications or how it is supposed to work. What I am after is its potential exclusive real use cases.

As for the upcoming projects on Ethereum et al and the proposals to be made on The DAO, I am as much excited as anyone else. Looking forward to seeing cool projects to make the "third scenario" come true.

Best,

Jian

PS. Let me clarify my point by giving an answer of the kind I'm looking for.

What will be the exclusive real use cases of the Waves platform?

Fee-free, transparent and secure equity crowdfunding projects, international money transfers and payments in fiat currencies, and a secondary security market.

I am looking for such an answer for Slock.it, or for smart contracts in general.

Dao whitepaper is more about how the dao is created and run, but in slock.it whitepaper you will find most of the answers to your questions. ;D

@sandiman,

Yes, I am aware that Slock.it has potential real use cases, but I see no superiority of this system regarding its being decentralized. No offense, but a cash deposit machine seems preferable in most cases.

Best,

Jian

Is there any good video that explains Slock.it ?