Great Chain of Numbers: A Guide to Smart Contracts, Smart Property and Trustless Asset Management By Tim Swanson 1 © Copyright 2014 by Tim Swanson Cover art credit: Matt Thomas and Invisible Order This manuscript is released under the Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International license: to copy, transmit, share, adapt, remix, make commercial use of and freely distribute this work. 2 Contents Foreword ....................................................................................................................................................... 6 Preface .......................................................................................................................................................... 8 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................................... 10 Glossary ....................................................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 12 Keeping an Open Mind ........................................................................................................................... 12 Altcoins.................................................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 2: Smart Contracts......................................................................................................................... 15 In Cryptoledgers We Trust ...................................................................................................................... 16 Not a One-Trick Pony or One-Hit Wonder .............................................................................................. 19 Assurance Contracts ............................................................................................................................... 21 Legalese Challenges ................................................................................................................................ 22 Argentina................................................................................................................................................. 23 Outside perspective ................................................................................................................................ 26 Chapter 3: Next Generation Platforms ....................................................................................................... 31 Colored Coins .......................................................................................................................................... 31 Mastercoin .............................................................................................................................................. 32 NXT .......................................................................................................................................................... 33 Ethereum ................................................................................................................................................ 35 BitShares ................................................................................................................................................. 36 Counterparty ........................................................................................................................................... 38 Open-Transactions .................................................................................................................................. 40 Ripple ...................................................................................................................................................... 41 Current Cryptoprotocol Infrastructure ................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 4: Smart Property .......................................................................................................................... 47 Paper Meets Electricity ........................................................................................................................... 49 Slowly Evolving ........................................................................................................................................ 50 Chapter 5: How smart contracts could work .............................................................................................. 52 Theory is grey .......................................................................................................................................... 52 Time Clock and Log-in ............................................................................................................................. 52 3 Decentralized Autonomous Organization ............................................................................................... 53 Putting the DAC into DACP ..................................................................................................................... 54 Experimental Cases ................................................................................................................................. 55 Peercover ............................................................................................................................................ 56 Subledger ............................................................................................................................................ 58 Where the Rubber Meets the Road ........................................................................................................ 59 Abstractions and Decimalization ............................................................................................................ 60 Mitigating Abuse ..................................................................................................................................... 61 The Tao of DAO ....................................................................................................................................... 62 Chapter 6: Fundraising Landscape .............................................................................................................. 65 Changes over Four Decades .................................................................................................................... 65 Venture Capital Charts ............................................................................................................................ 66 Straight to the Source ............................................................................................................................. 67 What Angels Are Looking For .................................................................................................................. 68 Asia .......................................................................................................................................................... 71 Potential business opportunities ............................................................................................................ 74 Remittances, Value-Added Services, and Legal Considerations ............................................................. 77 Chapter 7: How to Get Involved with the Crypto Ecosystem ..................................................................... 80 Mining ..................................................................................................................................................... 80 Merchant Ecosystem .............................................................................................................................. 81 Developer, Developers, Developers ....................................................................................................... 82 BTCJam ................................................................................................................................................ 82 Crowdequity ........................................................................................................................................ 83 Ease of use and discovery ................................................................................................................... 84 Bitcloud ............................................................................................................................................... 86 Coinsimple ........................................................................................................................................... 87 BitPay .................................................................................................................................................. 88 Kraken ................................................................................................................................................. 89 Chapter 8: Jack-of-All-Trades? .................................................................................................................... 91 Niche payment processing platform ....................................................................................................... 92 Usage rates ............................................................................................................................................