Archive for July 2017

“Can I get that in writing?”

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You may have heard of the Internet of Things (IoT for short), but did you realize that it’s a term that is part of a revolution going on all around us? The days of managing relationships through a centralized source are coming to an end, and end-points are beginning to talk to each other directly—no middle man.

When people talk about driverless cars, this peer-to-peer, IoT relationship is often what they are referring to in the background. The vehicle of the future will communicate with other vehicles directly (not through some centralized authority) to better understand the driving conditions and safety context of the road.

When discussion turns to bitcoin (or other crypto-currencies), it’s the same IoT idea again. Such currencies are built with blockchain programming, and the currency itself is both decentralized and self-contained—the currency can carry its own accounting history within itself, and this information is available to all who participate in its network (sometimes referred to as a node in the blockchain).
But did you know that there is now a complete platform environment to support the decentralized execution of contracts? It’s called Ethereum, it has just turned three, and it has the power to change everything about the way we do business on the Internet.

Contracts done in the usual manner are NOT decentralized, but proprietary. They can get lost (or corrupted), and they can be complex and costly to administer. When managed in an Ethereum environment, contracts are shared and updated to all participants in the moment.

Flexibility is the name of the game here. They are designed to last only as long as the parties allow, and any funds associated with the contract can be held in the buffer, waiting for the moment to be transferred (on the successful completion of the metric) or returned to person who put the funds up in the first place.

In short, contract relationships are going to become more like your smart car or your bitcoin wallet—they will be decentralized and consistently updated among all the parties (or nodes). It’s all going to be about how we as a community of users share, update, and fulfill transactions on an event-by-event basis.

And just think… contract lawyers might just be looking for something else to do…