TrustUs

Smart legal contracts for everyone.

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As John Carmack stated to a room full of VR developers just a few days ago: Version 1.0 apps are only the beginning. Driving user adoption of new technology requires "embracing the grind" and relentlessly iterating on user experience. Blockchain technology has (excitingly) whizzed far ahead of it's consumer usability. While user-friendly wallets and exchanges are beginning to exist, the ability to deploy custom smart contracts is still far out of reach for everyday people.

Simple Ethereum smart contracts provide the opportunity to reduce the cost of some legal work by as much as 99%, while also improving usability and audibility. Trust agreements (traditional cost: $3000+) and VC investment transactions (traditional cost: 5%+) are two examples of such use cases.

This level of cost reduction is enough to:

  • Allow financial tools like trust funds to be made accessible to more than just the wealthy
  • Allow unprofitable businesses, hampered by operational overhead, to become profitable
  • Reduce the financial friction of starting a business to near zero

The vast majority of this potential is still untapped today. Lawyers, non-programmers and other "normal people" are intimidated by the thought of interacting and creating smart contracts. How can they trust a contract that they can't read and understand? How can they "agree" to something they don't understand?

TrustUs' goal is to be the simplest hub for everyday users to start configuring, deploying and _ comprehending _ their own smart legal contracts. We aim to achieve this goal in 5 ways:

  • Provide well _ audited _ and explained smart contract templates
  • Provide a step-by-step builder to allow the configuration of these contracts
  • Provide an easy-to-use, custom-designed interface for each deployed contract
  • Pair contracts with english text and traditional legalese in order to allow users to feel they comprehend the contract, and to enable a greater chance for these hybrid contracts to be able to be "legally binding"
  • [Future] Incentivize auditors, contributors and interface designers to help build the contract library with a small royalty fee on each deployed contract

During this hackathon, we have narrowed the scope to one particular contract template, a trust. Trusts are highly beneficial as they can provide:

  • Immunity to estate taxes when passing on assets to descendants after death
  • Protection of assets in case of bankruptcy
  • Protection of assets from yourself, until a later date (enforced HODLing)

TLDR

  • Smart contract technology has whizzed far ahead of its related user experiences
  • There is enormous untapped potential in enable non-programmers and lawyers and to use smart contracts in an un-intimidating way
  • TrustUs' goal is to be one of the simplest hub for everyday users to start configuring, deploying and _ comprehending _ their own smart legal contracts.
  • To do this, we provide super simple contract builders, along with paired english descriptions/traditional contracts

Future Work

  • Further building of interface for interacting with smart contracts
  • Significant gas cost reduction for trust contract
  • Building of simple hybrid NDA contract
  • Building of legal language for "hybrid" contract
  • Add option to choose trust investment strategy (ie. convert all Eth to passive diversified fund token, like BLX)

Instructions

Installation

npm install -g truffle
npm install -g ethereumjs-testrpc
npm install

Install the Metamask extension in Chrome

Running (testrpc)

testrpc -m 'burger burger burger burger burger burger burger burger burger burger burger burger'
truffle migrate
npm start

Import top 2 testrpc private keys to metamask

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