Create smart-contract-negotiation.md

Author: shannona

EarlyResearch/smart-contract-negotiation.md

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+Topic: High-level machine-assisted multi-party smart contract negotiation framework
+===================================================================================
+
+What is the ideal high-level language for a smart contract?  The
+high-level source language used to specify a contract needs to be both
+readable to the human beings involved in specifying it, and to machine
+tools which verify its correctness or illuminate edge cases.  In the
+ideal language a typical smart contract is concisely specified,
+correct, and easy to understand with minimal training, with features
+reflecting the fact that multiple stakeholders are involved in the
+creation of any given smart contract.
+
+This is a much higher level than what is typically thought of as
+"script" in bitcoin-like blockchains or what ethereum calls "smart
+contracts."  What is being specified can be a state machine for
+determining ownership of tokens or collateral, for which state
+transitions involve interactive signing rounds and/or confirmation of
+a transaction on the network.  Or, perhaps, what is specified is
+constraints on the set of allowable state machines, and the actual
+state machine is materialized as a compilation step.  This would
+reflect the fact that multiple parties are involved and the final
+state machine must conjunctively satisfy each of the parties'
+necessary conditions, the specification of which is under their own
+control.
+
+Regardless of the form of the language, it must be possible to make
+and/or verify assertions about the behavior of the resulting smart
+contract protocol, and it must be possible to deterministically
+compile program actors / daemons which satisfy each role of the
+protocol with proofs of correctness.  Ideally this compilation step
+should make use of generic protocol runners such that specialized code
+need not be written on a per-contract basis.
+
+The output of a compilation step from this high-level source language
+is a [portable protocol
+specification](smart-contract-specification.md) which provably
+satisfies each participant's constraints or requirements.
+
+_Originally from https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/ResearchAgenda/blob/master/topics/smart-contract-negotiation.md by maaku._