Nick Szabo  🔑

Probably need a better term but it's basically the elimination of enforcement, by nature of the contract.

You can’t eliminate enforcement; if you do, the thing ceases to be a contract. (K = an en-force-able agreement between two or more parties).

I might suggest “self-executing” rather than “self-enforcing”

I distinguish between verifying (and thus, in combination with control of assets, incentivizing) performance, and automating performance. A vending machine, for example, verifies the user's perf (did user input a sufficient sum of money?) and automates the vendors' perf.

1/ Yes fair enough and makes sense to address these different elements separately. I know you have thought of this already, but I would propose that a separate dimension here is how much AUTONOMY/INDEPENDENCE the mechanism has. In the case of the vending machine, I trust

2/ the machine roughly as much as I trust the company that owns it. But take the case of a bond that is supposed to pay out at monthly intervals. Scenario A is that the software "automates performance" but does NOT have much autonomy. So, it's basically an automatic payment

3/ system. BUT the company that owns it can, e.g., shut it off whenever they want. In Scenario B, however, the software is NOT controlled by the company. It is autonomous, say, because it is a smart contract running on the ethereum blockchain. Doesn't HAVE to be on a blockchain