1/ People who think effective tokenization of securities is right around the corner have another thing coming. The complications and unanswered questions are numerous and have not been done justice in work I've read on the subject. 2/ This is true even with corporate stock, with respect to which Delaware & Wyoming have amended their respective corporate statutes in a way that facilitates blockchain functionality. Thus it is all the more true with other kinds of securities where no such work has been done.

1/ It seems like a lot of approaches to blockchain-based smart contracts, recognizing that "code is law" was unworkable, are going to the opposite extreme where smart contracts will be easily stoppable through administrator-type privileges, and claiming that this is necessary 2/ to ensure legal compliance. If that is true, then the benefits of deploying a smart contract to a public blockchain (vs. someone's server) are modest. By far the biggest benefit dreamed of by cypherpunks for blockchain-based smart contracts was always their potential

@mengwong @backofthenapkin 1/ Cyber/cypher-punk operates in legal gray areas, and sometimes in the zone of civil disobedience. So the struggle of being a lawyer/cypherpunk is real, and the two identities are in tension.

https://twitter.com/backofthenapkin/status/1027593146862108673

2/ Many " blockchain lawyers' " work so far has consisted of trying to legitimize the tech by (a) re-centralizing it to achieve compliance or (b) publicly (& sometimes gleefully) decrying blockchain entrepreneurs' tendencies to violate laws (e.g. securities laws in ICOs).

1/Kernel of truth in "code is law": Smart contracts improve finality/efficiency only if we can legally defer to/rely on their results. If we always have to check the code against words and words always win, smart contracts can't REPLACE traditional contracts, only perform them. 2/ But if we want to defer to smart contracts, since "code is law" is crazy, we need a rule that says the results of running the smart contract are legally binding EXCEPT in the event of x, y or z. And we need to say that in words, in a traditional legal contract.

Tweetstorm: 1/ The 2017 DGCL amendments enable Delaware corporations to put their stock ledgers on a blockchain. This is pretty cool, but seems to have been driven by a book-entry stock vision, and so I think we can improve upon it. 2/ I believe an on-chain ledger is not enough to fully realize the benefits blockchain can provide to traditional corporate stock. Getting rid of stock certs and tracking ownership transfers on-chain means stock is book-entry (vs. certificated), and book-entry has downsides.

1/ Tweetstorm re: the 'code is law' approach to the new EOS constitution that can be found here: medium.com/@bytemaster/th… 2/ Note generally: the old constitution REQUIRED that all EOS smart contracts be Ricardian--i.e., accompanied by a natural language translation. This new constitution does not, yet everything it says about smart contracts seems to simply presume that they will be Ricardian. Weird

1/ Larimer's suggestion that block producers campaign with promises of compensating key-theft victims (coindesk.com/dan-larimer-eo…) would violate Article IV of the original EOS Constitution. That's okay though--he has eliminated Article IV from his new proposed EOS constitution. 2/ Orig. EOS Constitution: "Article IV - No Vote Buying -No Member shall offer nor accept anything of value in exchange for a vote of any type, nor shall any Member unduly influence the vote of another."