Blockchain Bets Really Need Smart Contracts
Hey, I tried. I gave the guy several chances to honor the bet he made, and pay up when he lost, but there was no smart contract to enforce it.
Trust only works if the other guy is trustworthy.
Nothing earth-shattering, just a 20 HBD bet about who would be sworn in as President on January 20th. Since it wasn’t Orange Man, I won the bet. But if the other party to the bet decides to renege, what’s a wombat to do?
In this post, @joeyarnoldvn made some reckless statements:
If Trump is not reelected on the 20th of January of 2021, then make sure I pay up the money to each person who enters the bet for the amount they put in.
and
Yes, Biden will have a fake online inauguration virtually. But never mind that, Trump will have a real inauguration in DC in front of many millions of people. But you can bet all the money in the world that does not happen and I will pay each one of you that money when I lose the bet. This is gambling, like a lottery. Don't worry, you'll win and I will have to pay you all of that money.
Who am I to not want to take some money from someone that clueless? So I proposed a bet of 20 HBD payable on January 21st and Joey accepted.
The bet was made on 12/12/2020, well after the election but before the insurrection of January 6th.
Inauguration Day came and went, Trump flew off to Florida to sulk, and Biden was sworn in. Time for Joey to pay up. Instead, he reneged, still insisting that Trump had won (a well-worn lie, but not what the bet was about) and that Biden had not been inaugurated. Never mind that millions of people saw it happen.
“Well, who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”
— Chicolini, in Duck Soup
Meh, that’s twenty bucks I’ll never see.
On the Hive blockchain, reputation is about a lot more than the little number next to your name.
Me, I’m just some random guy who got stiffed twenty bucks. But in other posts, @joeyarnoldvn boasted about several $1,000 bets about the election that he made with folks on FB. Has he reneged on those bets too?
I’ve got to admit that when we originally agreed on the bet, I knew that there was a non-zero chance I’d not collect on it. With no smart contract between us, either was free to be a deadbeat.
But at least I knew that the blockchain never forgets.
That's lame, next time don't do bets with people who have nothing to lose, if he was generating good content and getting rewards on them I'm sure there would've been a bit more consequences from the community to scamming others like this. Here's a vote for your loss.
I avoid the side of Hive he hangs out in because theres quite a lot of crazies over there.
This is why we need reliable escrow until Hive supports smart contracts natively. But in Joey's defense, he probably thinks you colluded with the deep state and Putin (cuz why not?) to win the bet.
Smart Contracts are only as good as the Oracles that drive them. This bet could have been placed on Hive with two escrow transfers and a neutral party. However, what are the odds of a neutral party not counting the votes right?
Anyway, smart contracts on the base layer of hive would fundamentally change the blockchain in ways that wouldn't be advantageous to all. ETH during yesterdays 30% panic sell of had 300 Gas fees means to do a Uniswap transaction was around .3ETH. What's the good of a smart contract if it takes $300 to place your $20 bet?
Proposal 148 and 152 I have up allow for smart contracts like this, and I could build a moderated bet smart contract for the current system in a matter of hours. I'm trying to make the base layer as strong as possible before it starts managing arbitrary funds. I'd appreciate your support in these endeavors. :)
For a small bet he chose to ruin his reputation and integrity. For a small price, it was worth revealing what kind of character this guy had. I love how money reveals people.
Keep your eyes peeled, betting on HIVE coming soon.
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Ah, well. At least it made for the premise of a post that may earn $20+ :)
I'm no Biden supporter but I would've taken that bet if I'd known about it (and if I thought the parties were trustworthy, which is kind of hard for someone proposing such an odd bet -- but setting that aside, yeah, no that's totally reneging.
Anyway, that's what's great about prediction markets it synthesizes what people wish would happen, what they'll think will happen, and how hard they might work to make it happen.
I do look forward to smart contracts on hive for this kind of bet. Meanwhile my preferred political prediction market is still [PredictIt][https://www.predictit.org/]. It's not a blockchain, but contracts to reliably close based on the actual facts.
I made a very satisfying return there on Trump's victory over Clinton. I hadn't predicted he'd win the election and was in fact very surprised the next morning. However, I lived in rural Florida at the time and could see very clearly that the Clinton campaign was misreading the absence of a Republican "ground game" as a lack of engagement. In fact, rural Republicans were very engaged but organized largely through churches and high school sporting events which, for some reason, didn't make a blip on the campaign's oppositional radar. So I had a strong sense that Florida, at least would go to Trump in 2016.
The next morning when I woke up in Georgia and heard the news I figured it'd been similar in a lot of other states (later analysis further convinced me of this...the big way-of-life divide in the States is urban/rural, and that troubles me because those who have not lived both ways really don't seem to get each other at all.)
Rambling story. Point is — how I voted was a calculation apart from how I predicted.
Also, @preparedwombat you clearly won this bet. Congratulations. I'm sorry you won't get paid...and yet somehow I don't think that's really what matters in all this.
Agreed. It’s much more complicated than Red State/Blue State.
I live in a Purple area. Urban and very Blue 10–15 miles to the east of me; rural and Red 10–15 miles to the west. Two very different worlds.
I bet him the same as you did but for approximately $1160 in HBD and BTC.
I believe it is possible on Hive (without any hard-forks) at all to do the following. I wish to use Hive-Keychain for each party. The money from both users would be sent to an account. That is setup to only allow funds to move when all three users accept it.
This is my technical plan:
First, using an unused account (or creating a new one), create two unsigned transactions to move all of the result of the bet from that unused account to each of the people in the bet. These are the two possibilities. These transactions require the signature from both of the bettors. So we need to get both bettors to sign both of transactions. The expiry date of these transactions must be set to after the result of the bet can be determined. They will not have the authority to make this transaction happen by themselves.
Second create a transaction to run at the moment with the following operations:
When the event happens the neutral party can sign one or the other in order to award the winner.
The neutral party cannot steal the funds. Nobody can reneg the bet but the neutral party must be honorable enough to reward the correct party.
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