This isn't decentralized though. The ILP claims to be a legally binding smart contract - legally binding implies the use of a government, which involves courts and all that other sludge that tokens can help us get away from.
As it were, it's not even necessary. The Sia platform (disclaimer: I'm a founder) has a token which does something similar, but in a fully decentralized way. Sia is a storage platform, and each time someone forms contracts on the network, a fee is taken from those contracts and automatically distributed to the fund token holders. It's a similar model, but revenue is excluded to the blockchain, and it's fully decentralized.
Tokens are exciting because of what it allows us to achieve in the absence of any form of government. We can make storage contracts that are roughly analogous to SLAs, but without needing paper contracts, courts, lawyers, lawsuits, ambiguity, or drawn out battles about who was right and who was wrong. The blockchain takes care of all of that in a very compact, definitive, predictable way.
And no, it's not about skirting regulations or doing things that the law won't allow. It's about enabling things that the law already enables, but enabling them in more efficient ways.
Hmm.. Contracts are between two parties. If it’s not the government providing recourse in the case of a contract breach, then who? I don’t see a realistic alternative.
The blockchain! For something like file storage, you can use cryptographic techniques to prove that a party is or isn't holding the data that they were contracted to hold. This doesn't expand to the physical world well (for example, how can the blockchain measure whether or not you damaged a rental car?), but for digital resources like storage, certain types of computation, and digitally owned assets, loans, etc., you can use blockchain arbitration.
exactly, however this fully decentralized/untrusted model is only applicable to a few types of businesses, in the digital realm. in this case just stamping shares with a blockchain is not a particularly inspiring application. and "legally binding cryptocurrency" is a quite the oxymoron, like the venezuelan petro.
As it were, it's not even necessary. The Sia platform (disclaimer: I'm a founder) has a token which does something similar, but in a fully decentralized way. Sia is a storage platform, and each time someone forms contracts on the network, a fee is taken from those contracts and automatically distributed to the fund token holders. It's a similar model, but revenue is excluded to the blockchain, and it's fully decentralized.
Tokens are exciting because of what it allows us to achieve in the absence of any form of government. We can make storage contracts that are roughly analogous to SLAs, but without needing paper contracts, courts, lawyers, lawsuits, ambiguity, or drawn out battles about who was right and who was wrong. The blockchain takes care of all of that in a very compact, definitive, predictable way.
And no, it's not about skirting regulations or doing things that the law won't allow. It's about enabling things that the law already enables, but enabling them in more efficient ways.