[nzoschke]

It's not like honoring contracts is unsolved.

Bookies have been doing it forever with questionable effectiveness.

PayPal offers arbitration on stranger to stranger sales. Again with questionable fairness in tough cases.

Kickstarter et al are doing a pretty good job as arbitrators and collecting money and issuing refunds more or less fairly.

[nzoschke]

I do see room for improvement in efficiency.

Kickstarter and PayPal surely have large teams working on arbitration, review and fraud that could be delegated back to the involved parties vote with some rules.

And law suits can be very inefficient.

This absolutely could be solved without a block chain.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

This absolutely could be solved without a block chain.

I fail to see how, because a blockchain is just a continuously-growing list of data records hardened against tampering and revision[1].

A blockchain can't compel nor force me to action or inaction, nor enforce any legal penalty for inappropriate action or inaction.

The courts exist as an attempt to resolve differences between peoples interpretation of right and wrong, "slap a blockchain on it" won't change that.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_chain_(database)

[roywiggins]

How can code on a blockchain decide whether an eBay listing was fraudulent without paying humans to make the determination? Unless you have a general AI up your sleeve!

[ramchip]

I don't understand how arbitration would work. Say "A" buys something from "B". Later "A" complains what was shipped isn't what he ordered. How do you solve this with a blockchain and votes?