Blockchain Adoption

[heathmatlock]

I've been thinking a lot about my assumptions around blockchain, and I
wanted to start reaching out to other founders and hear what they have
to say. I believe a mass adoption of blockchain technology will be
necessary for blockchain companies such as Legalese to exist. How do
you suppose mainstream adoption of Bitcoin or Ethereum will take
place?

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Heath Matlock
+1 256 274 4225

[Virgil Griffith]

Mass adoption is not a necessary condition, but it would obviously help.

For example, simply having a programming language to better represent dumb PDF contracts would be sufficient for legalese to have traction.

However, obviously the more we can move away from the PDF all the better.

-V

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[Meng Wong]

On Sunday, 24 July 2016, heathmatlock <heathm...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've been thinking a lot about my assumptions around blockchain, and I
wanted to start reaching out to other founders and hear what they have
to say. I believe a mass adoption of blockchain technology will be
necessary for blockchain companies such as Legalese to exist. How do
you suppose mainstream adoption of Bitcoin or Ethereum will take
place?

First of all, I don't think Legalese is a purely blockchain company. The fundamental research we are doing is just as useful to the legacy world of traditional contracts, as it is to the brave new world of Ethereum-based automated funds transfers.

 On Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 10:07 AM, Virgil Griffith <i...@virgil.gr> wrote:

Mass adoption is not a necessary condition, but it would obviously help.

For example, simply having a programming language to better represent dumb PDF contracts would be sufficient for legalese to have traction.

However, obviously the more we can move away from the PDF all the better.

As the resident old guy at Legalese it falls to me to say that I have been on this merry-go-round before:

If history is any guide, it takes ten to twenty years for a promising technology to hit the mainstream, and during the installation phase of a new industry, much capital is invested/spent/wasted establishing infrastructure which only returns capital during the deployment phase. But such an installation-stage bubble is practically a law of nature: you can see it at work in Gartner's hype cycle.

These ideas are explored with some rigour by Carlota Perez and by William Janeway. Other theories that have stood the test of time include Geoffrey Moore's Chasm theory and Christensen's Disruption theory. It is not clear to me how many of the current generation of blockchain enthusiasts have studied these theories and other useful histories such as the founding of Visa.

Even if blockchain technologies do start supporting significant capital flows in certain niches, I personally don't think the world will reach the tipping point on using Blockchain ledgers for real estate and other major asset title registries, or for company shares, anytime in the next five years.

A number of problems need to be solved before widespread adoption should occur:

- rollback and undo

- governance

- support for civil intervention pursuant to court judgments

- security of the technology itself

Note I said "should" not "must" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better

For these reasons, I personally believe (not speaking for Legalese as a whole) that until blockchain technologies tip over to mass adoption, it remains a worthwhile effort to compile L4 to natural language, in cooperation with document assembly initiatives like contractcode.io, commonform.github.io, and commonaccord.org.

It is possible that L4 will contribute to the maturity and security of the blockchain ecosystem.

But blockchain is a very active area, roughly where networking was in the 1980s, where HTTP was in the 1990s.

Futurists like Charlie Stross have thrown out contrarian comments about blockchain technologies you would expect them to love: https://twitter.com/cstross/status/744456118445957120

Ethereum is an efflorescence of late period neoliberal capitalism. Big question now is what comes after capitalism. (Not: Marxism.)
looking for something that is to 1st International socialism as Ethereum is to 18th century mercantilism.

So I think it unlikely that Bitcoin/Blockchain/Ethereum/Ripple/Corda circa July 2016 are going to suddenly freeze in place and achieve dominance for the next 20 years as they currently stand, not while lots of big ideas remain to be explored.

What big ideas?

One example: every individual and organization could have a personal currency of their own – why should currencies be limited to governments and publicly traded companies? I can imagine exchange rates being computed as a shortest-path problem across a network of global nodes; interpersonal relationships could be modeled as willingness to gateway and vouch for currency.

Unlimited-level undo could provide a conversion mechanism between extensional and intensional value judgements, allowing somebody's actions to come back to bite them, and encouraging people to KYC the people they deal with.

And alternative currency movements deserve their day in the sun. https://jembendell.wordpress.com/

So, I think mainstream adoption will take several years, with many false starts along the way.

[Meng Wong]

On Thursday, 28 July 2016, Meng Wong <meng...@legalese.com> wrote:

But blockchain is a very active area, roughly where networking was in the 1980s, where HTTP was in the 1990s.

 http://www.ofnumbers.com/2016/07/21/archy-and-anarchic-chains/

[heathmatlock]

Meng, Virgil, thank you both for your responses. I can see how
Legalese's success isn't dependent on blockchain adoption. Thank you
for the many references.