So this gets into the difference between the rhetoric about smart contracts, and what they actually do. Obviously a smart contract can't ensure that an auction winner or crowdfunder gets the item. At best there could be some kind of reputation system. But to enforce something in the real world, you'd have to get an actual court involved. The smart contract removes the need to have an auctioneer running the auction and handling funds, that's all.
But that still means that, for example, when I'm trying to implement a new variant on crowdfunding, I can write the whole backend in several pages of code and just publish it, instead of renting servers, administering databases, signing up with a payment provider and having to comply with its terms of service.
...which some researchers proposed for Bitcoin, saying it'd be "easy" to implement with a hard fork adding a new opcode. I implemented the same scheme in a smart contract and it took 20 minutes.
Sports betting needs third-party data, but casino games don't.
But that still means that, for example, when I'm trying to implement a new variant on crowdfunding, I can write the whole backend in several pages of code and just publish it, instead of renting servers, administering databases, signing up with a payment provider and having to comply with its terms of service.
An example of a vault is this scheme: http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/02/26/how-to-implement-se...
...which some researchers proposed for Bitcoin, saying it'd be "easy" to implement with a hard fork adding a new opcode. I implemented the same scheme in a smart contract and it took 20 minutes.
Sports betting needs third-party data, but casino games don't.