Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Protocol changes

From: Mike Hearn <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:02:09 +0200

> I can't say I see what the point of all that added complexity is, contracts
> are usually more than just financial

The term "contract" is sort of misleading, but there isn't a better
word for it. Satoshi called them contracts so that's what I call them
too.

http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts

The point is to allow for lower trust in certain types of
transactions. For instance, consider Kickstarter. They allow people to
club together to fund the creation of new things, typically indie
movies and games. The problem is you need this trusted middleman to
collect peoples pledges and aggregate them. That adds fees, etc. With
contracts it can be done entirely with software, all the artist/game
programmer would need is to run some software on their website.

> What then allows the contract out of the memory pool into a chain?  The
> locktime?  No, no, forget it... I don't want to open a new can of worms.

;)

Lock time or if every sequence number is UINT_MAX.