Ricardian contract - Revision history

TiberiusB at 22:11, 8 November 2023

2023-11-08T22:11:41Z

TiberiusB at 22:11, 8 November 2023

2023-11-08T22:11:07Z

TiberiusB: Created page with "The Ricardian contract, as invented by Ian Grigg in 1996, is a method of recording a document as a contract at law, and linking it securely to other systems, such as account..."

2023-11-08T22:10:19Z

Created page with "The Ricardian contract, as invented by Ian Grigg in 1996, is a method of recording a document as a contract at law, and linking it securely to other systems, such as account..."

New page

The Ricardian contract, as invented by Ian Grigg in 1996, is a method of recording a document as a contract at law, and linking it securely to other systems, such as [[accounting]] - [http://iang.org/papers/ricardian_contract.html reference]. It is robust through use of identification by cryptographic hash function, transparent through use of readable text for legal prose and efficient through markup language to extract essential information.

A Ricardian contract places the defining elements of a legal agreement in a format that can be expressed and executed in software.[3]

A Ricardian contract can be defined as a single document that is

* a contract offered by an issuer to holders,
* for a valuable right held by holders, and managed by the issuer,
* easily readable (like a contract on paper),
* readable by programs (parsable like a database),
* digitally signed,
* carrying the keys and server information, and
* allied with a unique and secure identifier

The Ricardian contract separates the agreement of parties across time and domain. The negotiation and formation of a legally binding contract leads to a single parent document that defines all of the intent of that agreement, this is done in plain language - ''legal word''. The ''performance'' of that agreement might involve many transactions to be accounted for, logically separated from the meaning of the issue.

The join between the ''legal world'' and the ''accounting world'' is formed by the [[hash]] — each transaction locks in the terms and conditions of the precise deal of the parties by including the hash of the contract in every relevant transaction record, yet the operation of the transactions and the issuance of the contract are cleanly separated and thus perverse incentives are eliminated.

The role of the Ricardian contract is to capture the contractual relationship between contracting parties to assist later performance of that contract by programs (see [[smart contract]]). In its contractual form, it is the recording of an offer from an issuer to a holder. The offer is signed digitally within the format by the offerer, typically using a plain text digital signature such as provided by OpenPGP.

The acceptance of the contract is typically formed by signing/agreeing to a transaction that refers to the [[hash]] of that contract. Within the context of a high-performance payment system, a secure payment will cite the hash of the contract of the instrument being paid, as well as paying and payee parties and a quantity of units. In a [[smart contracts]] system, the acceptance would be performed by operating the contract's code to move the state of the agreement forward.

[[Smart contracts]], as defined in the work of Nick Szabo are an abstract concept relating to the automated performance of an already agreed contract, whereas the Ricardian contract is a design pattern to capture the intent of the agreement of the parties, before its performance.

By means of [[hashes]] within as references or links to external documents, above, the Ricardian contract form easily extends to refer to code. The explicit referral to the code can pass legitimacy from overarching legal prose to the code, thus implementing the concept of the smart contract.

Refactoring to describe blockchains and to integrate references to [[smart contract]] logic created a hybrid version of the Ricardian contract. This form proposes a tuple of {prose, parameters, code} where the parameters can particularise or specialise the legal prose and the computer code in order to create a single deal out of a template or library of components. Also known as a Ricardian triple, it can describe blockchains, smart contracts, IoT devices and persons.

=Applications in material peer production=

We believe that Ricardian contracts are useful for creating the link between material and virtual, thus linking [[OVNs]] and [[DAOs]].

Ricardian contracts can be instrumental in instantiating the [[nondominium]] ownership regime for shared [[resources]].

=See also=
[[Contract]]

[https://mattereum.com/ Mattereum] and [https://medium.com/@leashless Vinay Gupta]
[[Smart contract]]

NOTE: the text above was largely imported from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_contract Wikipedia].

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 Refactoring to describe blockchains and to integrate references to [[smart contract]] logic created a hybrid version of the Ricardian contract. This form proposes a tuple of {prose, parameters, code} where the parameters can particularise or specialise the legal prose and the computer code in order to create a single deal out of a template or library of components. Also known as a Ricardian triple, it can describe blockchains, smart contracts, IoT devices and persons.
 =Applications in material peer production=
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 [https://mattereum.com/ Mattereum] and [https://medium.com/@leashless Vinay Gupta]
 [[Smart contract]]

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 * carrying the keys and server information, and
 * allied with a unique and secure identifier
 The Ricardian contract separates the agreement of parties across time and domain. The negotiation and formation of a legally binding contract leads to a single parent document that defines all of the intent of that agreement, this is done in plain language - ''legal word''. The ''performance'' of that agreement might involve many transactions to be accounted for, logically separated from the meaning of the issue.