| An example may be useful. Suppose I tell you that I have written an Ethereum contract whereby people can loan me money, and after a year, I will pay them back double. Before you enter into one such contract with me, I hope it would cross your mind to wonder if I might actually be running a Ponzi scheme. Don't worry, I say, Ethereum has this gas feature that means the transaction will always halt. How much more confident should that information make you feel? Again, it has nothing to do with gas.
You just need to review/audit the contract's source and EVM code and be sure it doesn't have backdoors. For simplicity, you can think about Ethereum Transaction as an RPC call to Ethereum contract, where in addition to arguments (Data), you can also transfer a monetary value (in Ether) and provide fuel (Gas) for contract execution. Gas price (in Ethers) serves the same function as Bitcoin Tx fee. Gas mechanism is just an implementation detail. EDIT: Regarding the contract example you mentioned "unsecured loan", I'm not sure it can be implemented as a "Self-enforcing contract", which is a proper term for "Smart Contracts". If a contract depends on your will or ability of repaying the loan, then it's not a self-enforcing contract. Somebody need to provide a collateral. It doesn't make sense for you to put up a 1001 Ether collateral to take 1000 Ether loan. With smart property represented on the Blockchain you will be able to put up your car or apartment as a collateral for a loan, then it can be made self-enforceable. But it's not there yet. The only way I can see for it to be implemented is with your own token, which will be devaluated each time somebody not repaying the loan in full. |
You appear to have replied to the wrong person in your first post in this thread. Did you mean to say that @drdeca, not @mannykannot, misunderstands the purpose of gas?