Marlowe Looking Great, Reddit

Cheers Everyone,

I noticed a good response to the UI Marlowe tool in reddit.
A point was made similarly to one I had a few months back about making an UI that for less experienced folks which takes a further step towards user dominance. The less educated/younger crowd if you will.

However, a great point around both industry users liking the current UI, and that is where the focus should be was evident. Great work all, off to an exciting new chapter…and its already making an impact. :sunglasses:

@SebastienGllmt
@RobJF
@Mihori
@maki.mukai
@jonmoss
@rickymac

4 Likes

This is indeed a great achievement!

I understand Marlowe is the first iteration of the financial product. With time it will improve…
Currently it has two very important shortcomings:

  1. Absence of time/date dependent execution of code [as in execute by at/before/after 10 AM GMT on December 31, 2019, etc.].
  2. Absence of guaranteed settlement/finality.

If you write an American option contract that expires at a certain date, you would want to be able to check the date continuously.

Also you want to be able to claim that settlement occurred with 100% certainty. The SL where Marlowe will reside, I believe, won’t have this capability unless they integrate BFT (will they?).

So far it is a good conceptual tool to play with but needs a bit more refinement to start attracting the financial professionals that might use it.

5 Likes

I am interested in using Marlowe to do estimates for a tradesman or small team of trades people. They typically estimate how many days a job will take and then use that number to calculate their materials cost. But a job might have a number of tasks and each task a set of formulas to calculate its materials and their cost. So a three level database is needed: Client:Job:Task. When a quantity surveyor does an estimate he begins with the materials and works up from them, but a tradesman wants the simpler approach I have described because he already knows the materials he will buy and doesn’t need to list them.

Can I write this in Marlowe?

You see, an experienced tradesman knows his rate of materials consumption. A man can only paint so many standard rooms in a day, for instance. Can only pave so many linear feet of pathways, etc etc. So days are a natural metric and formulas can convert days into materials content. He just wants a fast way to decide what to quote so he can get to his next estimate smartly.

I don’t get your second point. My understanding is that Marlowe contracts always reach an end.
They will settle due to timeouts expressed in block heights.

Yes, that’s the problem, though.

Timeouts occur based on block heights and valid blocks themselves are subject to eventual finality.

So let’s say your futures contract paid you something at block height X which occurred in time Y. But let’s say then that block was a duplicate, the chain forked and another chain with competing block was accepted at time Z.

Now, if the price of your underlying changed substantially between these two blocks, the contract wouldn’t work as intended and/or expose you to extra risk.

Therefore it is advisable to have a proper clock and trigger payments based on actual time than tying them to blocks that are poor proxies for time.

Ok. Yep, agreed ! Let’s hear about the acceptable solutions. Soon I guess, it looks like a pressing issue.