[tornato7]

Serious software bugs and hacks are not exclusive to smart contracts. Just look at the Equifax hack or the 737 Max tragedies. If you only look at the worst outcomes of a system of course you’re going to assume it’s all worthless, but that’s not a fair representation of the reality. Smart contracts allow anyone to deploy an application to a global computer that will host the software indefinitely for all to access, with essentially zero downtime for five years running. That global computer will also take care of 100% of your logging and accounting for you and replicate it on millions of nodes around the world within seconds.

Banking APIs are a total integration nightmare, while smart contracts can easily integrate with one another through standard open source interfaces, allowing for contracts to build on top of one another’s code and liquidity in unique ways and in a fully transactional nature due to the shared execution layer.

You also don’t have to trust the developer of a contract to do what they claim, because the protocol’s code can be publicly audited and transactions can be simulated.

All I’m trying to say is yes, smart contracts are innovative - these are just some of the ways that they have improved on traditional computer programs.

Of course, you do have to trust a network. The 2016 hard fork was problematic, but Ethereum has come a long way in 6 years and is magnitudes larger in scale, with no similar breaches of consensus since. It has proven itself to be extremely trustworthy.

I would trust Ethereum, wherein every single fraction of a cent can be publicly reconciled and accounted for since inception, over Wells Fargo, which is involved in ongoing class action lawsuits over fraudulently opening checking accounts and stealthily reordering transactions to increase overdraft fees.

[gregjor]

The so-called “global computer” runs on the internet, and the nodes are just servers. Blockchains built on top of the available substrate cannot be somehow more capable, stable, reliable, or persistent than what they run on.

Software bugs are a fact of life. But if my bank makes an error I have recourse. If my debit card is stolen I’m protected. Wells Fargo may be greedy and corrupt, but it’s not a Ponzi scheme, and they can’t rugpull and disappear with depositor accounts.

[tornato7]

By that argument then no software can ever be innovative because it all runs on Turing-complete computers that could have done that already.

[gregjor]

Refuctio ad absurdum. The internet is already a “global computer” that can store programs indefinitely and run them based on triggers and schedules. Calling the Ethereum blockchain a “global computer” and scripts “smart contracts” gives the appearance of innovation without any actual innovation. The main contribution of blockchain/crypto so far is ridiculous energy consumption and enabling crime and fraud. In terms of software development or computer science there’s no innovation, just claims of innovation hiding behind buzzwords and hype.