# Japanese, Human-Readable Smart Contracts by Henning Diedrich (Devcon5)

- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2020-10-09
- Duration: 51:20
- Topics: blockchain, smart contracts, distributed ledger, ethereum
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-H4s91y8UzsQ
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4s91y8UzsQ

## Description

Visit the https://archive.devcon.org/ to gain access to the entire library of Devcon talks with the ease of filtering, playlists, personalized suggestions, decentralized access on IPFS and more.
https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/5/japanese-human-readable-smart-contracts

This workshop invites native or fluent Japanese speakers to create a Japanese-based smart contract language to create Ethereum smart contracts with that can be read by anyone who understands Japanese, and deployed directly to the Ethereum mainnet. Speakers of other languages who are interested in facilitating a Lexon variant based on their language are also invited to understand the process of adaption. The attempt is based on the Open Source, human-readable smart contract language Lexon that is a subset of natural English. This workshop is a hackathon-like event where the Lexon compiler source code and grammar is altered to see if a Japanese version of Lexon is possible. Coding skills are NOT required from participants. Lawyers and impact-oriented participants are highly welcome. Only one or two programmers — likely the tutor — will be working on code. The actual work will be for the audience to understand how the Lexon grammar is structured and to propose what has to be changed to make it work with Japanese. The result may be a working Lexon compiler for smart contracts written in Japanese, that anyone who can read Japanese can understand, and that can be compiled and run on the Ethereum main- and testnet immediately. This is possible because the Lexon grammar is relatively concise and changes to it can be made in a straight forward way that could lead to immediate results. At the least some experimental output should be achieved from an alpha version of a Japanese Lexon compiler. This is a different proposal from the workshop that teaches people how to write human-readable smart contracts in English. This Workshop is complementary, hands-on research part to the proposed 20-minute session about Human-Readable Smart Contracts. It will allow participants to shape the way forward for the project. (For your convenience, the following is a repeat from the complementary 20-minute session application that focusses on reading and the science behind it.
'Human-readable' smart contracts expand the audience of people who can read smart contracts by a thousand times. They democratize them beyond the ranks of developers and provide a means for expert validation, human debate and consensus.
Lexon is a new type of program language that can be read by anyone without any preparation, made to create smart contracts that run on the Ethereum mainnet. It has been built from the ground up, over the course of two years, to allow lawyers and non-programmer experts to understand first-hand what a smart contract means. The result turns out to be enlightening for any community that wishes to allow their non-technical members to read for themselves what its DAO or smart contract code actually means. Turns out that's everyone except re-centralizing start ups.

LEX Escrow Contract.

“Payer” is a person. “Payee” is a person. “Arbiter” is a person. “Fee” is an amount. The Payer pays an Amount into escrow, appoints the Payee, appoints the Arbiter, and also fixes the Fee.

CLAUSE: Pay Out.
The Arbiter may pay from escrow the Fee to themselves,
and afterwards pay the remainder of the escrow to the Payee.

CLAUSE: Pay Back.
The Arbiter may pay from escrow the Fee to themselves,
and afterwards return the remainder of the escrow to the Payer. 
Lexon is an Open Source project by the Lexon Foundation. It was created by the presenter and implemented by Marcelo Alaniz, Nicolas Guzzo and him.

Speaker(s): Henning Diedrich
Skill level: Beginner
Track: Society and Systems


Follow us: https://twitter.com/efdevcon, https://twitter.com/ethereum
Learn more about devcon: https://www.devcon.org/
Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/ 

Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers. 
Devcon 5 was held in Osaka, Japan on Oct 8 - 11, 2019.
Devcon is organized and presented by the Ethereum Foundation, with the support of our sponsors. To find out more, please visit https://ethereum.foundation/

## Transcript

[Applause] today we'll have eight except and for this good thing that we're not too many because if you have questions chimer I didn't give any it was too fast happy to explain this because in the end we want to try to be reporting where we are hopefully trying to find out what might make sense the next step either getting started I would like to just what a benefit of those I've been there yesterday were they forth like to give you the presentation walk you through what mechanism and [Music] face where these a molten iron and standing meant to become they have a different focus or at least a beginning that you have and now that we're coming to the point where we are the more mature environment that we had before we should also be exact about what's my that's next let's conduct xvr what do you and we have basically saying well that every Brett I haven't called this more context maybe we should have just called them sort of procedures something like that and excited I must be happy to take out the bundle that they are dumping where this thing I was not especially pay for it and explore what is possible as me with programs that are running on dog chain and have certain and part of the difficulty switch out of these presentations I'm sorry to start out but I think disappeared Martine and our project and to set the tone [Music] a sound system here because we don't have sound together sing to it obviously human brain we have they're all working in product right so what we have now we look at depending on how you count something that cost is nothing to scale with what's going on in the real world the biggest computers at this point 10 million come on come on [Music] society should you not and this is something that also you go beyond the bubble that barrel in your item it's wonderful to see obviously based on but other a lot of people care about things that they don't care about these kinds of things that we're not maybe everybody's thinking when [Music] any more horses and I was finding the XP users have been digitized it's not really the same to mention that we're talking about next doesn't view about China an alternative working something else that maybe you next one's just proposing something else but here's something I learned when I was in and the more you might feel like don't need no rules you just being hampered by rules it just means pretty strong but I think my favorite is talk about society I don't see you and that is the 10% and I'm gonna suppress sorry you don't have a contact interesting problem our to read or parts of the Bible smart objects though the room so next noticing was that the only two accounting language business bites mate just because computer knows this is actually I put it on now you'll be looking at this people who are not [Music] so how far we can push this young curious how far we can push them apart English we can take this and I hope to go waiter when they're learning about oh it's a little right and what content is already particularly Japanese now you writing it on the right-hand side you can get the tea warm salinity tap no recipe eternity who are also target backward or an excellent dozen you can see things to understand what the focus is going to be from the poet I'm just like to that were to try to ya know if anybody has a tip of mijo you can switch it back out of the cool things presentation to other stuff embarrassing yourself but just so [Music] all right yeah [Music] next morning so on the pointer to what is the view of the font size excellent thank you so then something widely used to you have on the culture section that is painting so for now this works now we say in this example we the payer is saying everything else and the logic is that isn't it just not gonna make all right so the payer basically and appoints the after also points the PD this is already where a smart contract is more powerful than a CPA another as we are used to how it's done because this means nobody can run away with the money money this is basically the cookie but always on this country becomes an actual contract this is the first thing that happens on the blockchain but also say and now the main functionality of this contract is basically a payout right so we want to be able to say that the avatar is the one who also earned the feet so and this no you're done is right and I would not go into this now but as we can and so a very powerful thing that we have here is that we can part because we have the information that is happening very during the translation process we can use that and create the interface how to interact on this contract so that we can have an interface where basically we're using information that the actor may do something and nobody else before something to know the button that is going to be created for the payout opportunity should only be shown when interpreter who's non-tender to advance right so and this this goes on this thing you can take the anti-claus of the other event of the payout as a description for that button because toad is ah spelling test movie on that rate the command of the sauce is the same thing so base to actually then interact with these that is all because the entire process of fascinating the necks and contracts hiding in their solidity is happening on a higher level than the usual programming does I've written about this there's paper up every year is arguing that because next from space on a higher level my closest a human language okay birds which is a really different concern in those structures that I used to translate that into something else and what you usually have an internal neglige these we know program language we have the tree as you can see on the right hand side who yes not where message stuff Sanders message and your sender and then stop operator I'll shake senator as a JSON and that's a boy eternity compiler is concerned with that transmit to the combiner that's concerned with sitting next up actually this talk about the payer pays X so the is the reason why you wrote the arbiter of a caveman scroll we definitely need to get the MIDI if some condition happens the conditional because it's later on so this is a condition for access control place right who's allowed to even go and ever execute this function from the my contract the program but also who is even having this option like on the legal side when you go at the unit contract and that's something actually we have this customer because it's different right a smart object works with incentives I can do beyond the bucket and try to enforce something that didn't happen just because you wrote in the contract some itself so to really articulate contracts that make sense you would pretty often try to reverse the logic normally that would usually just say okay you have the must do this or that or doing the business and this should happen this case you just get the option and hopefully this he was tighten up that the operator is even incentivized to actually do what they may do but if they don't then this perfect actually is not saying that the operator is not going to jail ever being punished that is also the company launched a contract works how cuz we can now create a state right you could create a version of this contract where you set the aquifers recipe in his name so you're sure that they gonna lose money and they don't act as we want them to act so it's a whole different deal I guess of publishers how do you do it there's good example for next essence yeah what is the lux on manager so I wanted to show that it's pretty easily to go and extend excellent programs using next on practice we're going to be a lot about having templates and learning from those templates to extend adaptive what's really one there's an exercise somebody fearless courageous I just pasted what would I have to change now in this second class where it says player again to make this this be an opportunity for the after-school also decide to give the money back to prepare because I'd say in real-world business didn't happen so just intuitively but I have to change just common sense right so what's from there I'm just thinking this one has a change from the second pause what's your what's your equivalent to a boolean who needs to declare some sort of boolean and then say depending on that while listening to you seven lot like a programmer baby thing back it up for decision you need to the name to pay back to themselves so much [Music] is there way or an idea to put it the other way around from somebody's collection yeah thank you that's a very interesting question so and this question comes up because of you have a lot of investments ability contracts and [Music] able to guarantee a level of the information that [Music] something that also contract but sometimes I read this right person three times right he's a person no cause the audience always catches me and what I thought interesting as a programmer is that actually people people now can catch errors in the program using the normal language standard it doesn't be tried in English it's probably about that's pretty powerful because it metal remembers I'm just an reviews that all the time right so that's really and you cannot as a mainland criticize or jump in and say all this is coming the same if I write something else other than you window right that's wrong so that's a very interesting side effect certainly not intended but this kind of stuff keeps he's coming up a different way of running program so [Music] don't know what happens today so a lot of clothing or not I would like to use our time basically the number of new beginnings basically my person he was Rita it's quite context has this magical new feature that they can transfer so the idealism reflects agreed and now programs can't ship possession in the business is asked bangles by contract my project something serious it will ask that question that they do like what happens my contact somebody doesn't agree with what it does so yes simply a smart country denied a contract I can show to a judge and I take out the incentive very very consuming hopefully that contract is going to say exactly what happens I'm watching and then or not [Music] see something so the whole thing is compliant in the interests of company they all can vary find out they all can chime in on what's happening and also and also wrote in the users for small businesses that might not have a bakhtin apartment they can read those smart contracts themselves so in the end it's also it's also taking on a current way the business models work in the boxing world were a start-up rather complex smart contract that is very generic and it's going to we're supposed to work in very different situations and then basically the startup is a provider of the service that is created around a smart object is very much marketing that's the sense of hopefully an excellent writing Alexa contact writing is perfection that's exactly what you one becomes so easy that you will love these new styles right so that's that's another [Music] yeah so obviously a smart contract is just sitting there before anyone can interact with it through gathering ever how you know how would is one put on through this that they are dealing with the support contract that came from the blacks on the people contract such that they were ere actually the smart contract is you know basically indicating their consent to be bound by that so one of the so that it actually has the full art but and there's other stuff like reversibility of inclusion contracts without doing your work because judges can change history you can say well yeah actually this context would have never been well let's try this out that would you yeah so I did notice there's certain rules that you're following when you're writing the election thing like every sentence is ending with a period right when you're defining variables it's in quotation marks so there's a there's certain lexicon that's required in order for you to be able to convert there's it does it flag like you forgot your period for an average person yeah actually you did that on the side right no but yeah but you're working to make compiler be as helpful as possible this is a big topic in programming but Russ compiler reading is very advanced in this almost tells you what he should have program instead of what you try to write there are other competitive abeyance you know C++ also has his problem the pollution behind it and this is definitely something from day one that it was very important to me messages that are possible it's a little bit something of a luxury thing in the sense that they love something we have to test that we have to be humorist first whether it actually bursts and if it works yes when you about person complexity like long-term vision how would you like to direct the evolution of the lecture like the natural languages completely contextual ad that is like backwards and forward in the parsing was making like almost impossible tasks so to implement by the proper white of something there of you like Selena bring maybe this feature of the language that when I have a sentence it carries on the context from the previous sentences are but maybe you decide to drop on a teacher to refer to the future because of some way or you just leave it on the side because the right to focus now move on I thank you where you stand and what's the current state and what are the negative yeah so what we're doing here is called control language and basically pointing out possible we are but instead to interact using an existing prefer English that space experiment Alan to a degree where we can actually parse it and create a in solidity or Sofia for this we can and that's the that's the major premise basically we can basically pare down the possibilities of English to something that still sounds right but will not allow you to just go a little overboard and create a maternity complex sentences or even sentences where you decide to arrange words and in order to know because we have to and actually this I'm just showing all the stuff is actually violence that has progressed that contains information that is doing eventually being sort of stated blueprint of how the computer understands language and what or what keywords or what kind of patterns that is looking for be able to then stretch out of that pain structure that allows you to really have the understanding with the computers of the state of what languages are so and with this yeah this is the ground so this is following it through it's not too long but this is how you articulate what you actually want so for example we have statements right there's a number of then you have the definition that Clause is just to see there there are certain key words that you'd see in close and that's actually the key that's exactly but I want to close with to the open discussion about is this thinkable with Japanese right is this something where Japanese Brehme is giving you offset those that you will probably not be able to go for is it worth giving this back to also create the next one that is based on so what I was showing [Music] could this one this memory talk about and I would like those who say that they can speak Japanese to China and educate us if they feel that what we do here with English is something that could also work with is the retro and I have opinions and reasons why or why not because you talk about simple language so couple of things one is that did you think about it I plzz like that specification which apparently we use and the other thing is the problems that happened is controlled language a matter of debate in linguistics which is because it is from natural language control language if there is a dispute any not go back and claim not my fault it's the language is like that I thought I meant it this way if I was more like that right and because you cannot do a saying some of the nuances of natural language will you not limit the kinds of contracts you can write in it well let me state my pressure what do you think you think reason [Music] so what do you think what do you deal with the challenges movie [Music] and I'll use them and that is something I'm familiar don't do right not as nice as English word but words all of a sudden at a certain point that the sentence have to be handed so this is a major challenge to even see where more different pricing protectees Japanese accent [Music] you know chromatically japanese is actually relatively easy grammatically it has very few irregular x' if Paul is a particular structure they have these particles like you you have the lock there before the comma so you can basically kind of uses those anchor points to figure out what the code is going to be in fact this has even more specificity than remember my question earlier about main may can be can be permission but it could also mean the conditional which is for me first thing that came to mind was conditional rather than the permission this is very clear the Commission the Japanese itself that you're used here she know she had a local to that you must that's what we Japanese is talking about they have the right to do something and so that levels just to see as long as the person writing it knows what the rule is that you have to use this quote about the human pinkie Massa as long as you're using that then it could very easily be read in so you actually like one language can read the shy boy all legal phobia instead of English everybody calls in Japanese I remember right the American get back what it's been all my yes incident of finding that but that's you tomatoes have you no no that would have to be the biggest applause while the South was going to tell you what that's actually where invented this term because my context was the whole point about was messin biggest countries yeah so the only challenge like for example this jihad oh go got the Hamas that could be written as XI mus with kind of a shorthand version and so the person who's writing it needs to know they have to adhere to certain things rather than using shorthand and Japanese also has sometimes combination of two characters which could be replaced with one character where the longer things like got shusui versus novel so that all needs to learn about shoe needs to study but they both fundamentally mean like the same thing in English but one is a pairing of two words together the other one is one separate word with Marquis Logano with India so as long as the person typing knows the rules you could actually easily convert it but there's two ways of writing verbs Senate caucus to those verses a taboo to choose something right but as long as you know you could use you should combine it with the two verbs plus something else then it's I think it's very easily convertible I would invite everybody to join us on Friday where [Music] but it could be a great stunning [Music] thought you know thank you [Music] [Applause] you