Great to see your reply. I only came across your paper a few weeks ago, through fortuitous circumstances:
A very smart but non-engineering friend of mine was asking about cryptocurrencies, and - in trying to explain why i think ethereum's "improvements" over bitcoin are anything but - I directed him to read about The DAO.
He promptly rabbit-holed and came up an hour or so later with your gem of a paper.
So ... nice work! A sanskrit professor found, understood, and thoroughly enjoyed the paper. And then hipped his programmer friend to it :)
re: blockchain differences: I hear that Ethereum is planning to move to proof-of-stake, rather that proof-of-work, but I don't have an opinion on that. There may be other salient differences I'm unaware of.
It's the 'smart contracts' that I think are foolish.
Replacing the legal system with code only makes sense if all of the following obtain:
(a) the code is 100% bug-free (b/c accidents cannot be rewound)
(b) all code-writers are 100% honest (their code does what they say)
(c) all contract participants are 100% perfet code readers (so as to not enter into fraudulent contracts)
(Strictly speaking, only one of (b) and (c) needs to be true).
And even then you haven't really replaced the legal system if you are dealing with any goods that exist outside of the blockchain, since no matter what the "smart contract" code does, those ultimately need to be transferred outside the smart contract system and subject to the legal system.
(And, actually, even transactions entirely within the blockchain may trigger legal consequences, so even for them you've merely supplemented, rather than replaced, the legal system.)
A very smart but non-engineering friend of mine was asking about cryptocurrencies, and - in trying to explain why i think ethereum's "improvements" over bitcoin are anything but - I directed him to read about The DAO.
He promptly rabbit-holed and came up an hour or so later with your gem of a paper.
So ... nice work! A sanskrit professor found, understood, and thoroughly enjoyed the paper. And then hipped his programmer friend to it :)