The legal contract of the EVM is “you are allowed to execute any computationally legal sequence of instructions on the EVM”. At least that’s how it has always been presented.
People who post smart contract code on the EVM are equal users of a shared computation infrastructure. If they want to put legal terms on who can use their smart contract and what for, they should need to make their own blockchain platform, because they certainly don’t own Ethereum.
The law already regulates mistakes in traditional markets. If you accidentally sell your shares for a fraction of what they are worth, you cannot go to a judge and ask them to return the “stolen” shares. When you subject yourself to a mechanistic market system, the predictable operation of the system is more important than any participant’s bad fortunes.
> The legal contract of the EVM is “you are allowed to execute any computationally legal sequence of instructions on the EVM”.
Where is this contract? I've never seen it. The rest of your argument is based on this premise. The "legal contract" of a computer program is the same, yet we have laws on what you can and can't do to other people's computer programs.
> The law already regulates mistakes in traditional markets. If you accidentally sell your shares for a fraction of what they are worth, you cannot go to a judge and ask them to return the “stolen” shares.
Someone taking all the money from a smart contract you gave money to is not like your fictional example of a person selling their shares for the wrong value.
People who post smart contract code on the EVM are equal users of a shared computation infrastructure. If they want to put legal terms on who can use their smart contract and what for, they should need to make their own blockchain platform, because they certainly don’t own Ethereum.
The law already regulates mistakes in traditional markets. If you accidentally sell your shares for a fraction of what they are worth, you cannot go to a judge and ask them to return the “stolen” shares. When you subject yourself to a mechanistic market system, the predictable operation of the system is more important than any participant’s bad fortunes.