Regarding central authority trust — this year’s headlines have been littered with examples of data thefts from personal identity information to financial details. From Equifax on down to major cloud service providers, data is being stolen that can never be made fully private again. As a result, millions are now ripe for identity theft.
I’m all for the “reverse sale” argument where applicable, but this really doesn’t fit the bill. To sell central authority, you would have to argue in support of (a) dramatically increased cost for transactions, (b) the inconvenience of having to wait/queue/schedule with the authority, and (c) rampant corruption and identity theft (at government institutions and private corporations).
Also, there is no particular reason why the blockchain would be closed to reversals or corrections. Or why transactions couldn’t involve middlemen that are appropriate to the situation. This is exactly what makes smart contracts unique vs. simple blockchain entries. I’m starting to suspect you don’t understand the power and freedom smart contracts provide.
As I mentioned in my post, certain transactions could require additional approval. The contract might require that both the buyer and seller have a third party or escrow co-sign the deal with them. It could be signed as a smart contract that can be reversed by the involved parties for a set period of time, or by a trusted local authority that is identified in the smart contract as being a legal authority. In extreme examples, for very large transactions, you could require lawyers and even give them predefined powers of reversal.
But here’s the important part — everything is recorded publicly to enable further scrutiny at any time. That’s the real difference. It’s not about transactional immutability. It’s about transparency, efficiency, and permanent accountability.
As far as private keys being confusing to users or stolen, this will continue to evolve. Not only will it become easier for people to manage their keys (much as TouchID and FaceID are making passwords easier and arguably more secure), but again — there’s no reason why identity crypto can’t have recourse baked in for rare situations where keys are lost or stolen.
As far as use-cases go, global transactions are only going to get far more complex, automatic, and instantaneous in the future. AI, robots, cloud services, etc. are all going to need to be able to make these changes faster and in a trusted way. Central authorities are already a huge bottleneck, and they are only going to get worse. IMHO, blockchain smart contracts are the best solution to a rapidly growing problem.
