Ari Jules published a crypto thriller

Where do we draw the line between life and fiction?

Ari Jules is a chair professor at Cornell Tech, a member of the Computer Science faculty at Cornell University, and a principal scientist at Chainlink Labs, a leader in decentralized virtual networks. He wrote the crypto thriller novel The Oracle, published by Talos Press.

The novel's main character, like Joel, is an expert on blockchain oracles, which are entities that connect the blockchain to external systems. Jules co-wrote the Chainlink Labs 2021 white paper.

Similar to the author, the main characters of the novel wrote a paper about rogue smart contracts and explains why the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (in the book) helped foil a $10,000 smart contract used to kill certain people. Professor Vigano.

This does not mean that the novel, published on February 20, is a roman à clef, that is, a book in which the names of real people or events appear. According to Jules, it's a “cautionary tale about weaponized blockchains” written in hopes of preventing “abuse of the financial system by AI agents.”

But according to the book's publisher, it's also “a tale of ancient and modern, lost antiquities and tangled cryptobillionaires, cybercriminals and a whirlwind of digital ideas.”

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Last week, Cointelegraph sat down with Joel to discuss why he wrote this science-based novel, what lessons or warnings he has for technologists and society at large, and how he sees blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) unfolding in the next decade.

Cointelegraph: What compelled you to write a novel about, of all things, Rogue Smart Contracts?

Ari Jules: The book is somewhat a dramatization of a research paper we wrote together in 2015. This is the first paper I've written on smart contracts, and it's an idea I brainstormed with a colleague. The question of what smart contracts are good for. We both have a background in security, and therefore tend to think in opposition.

And the first application is crime. We recognize that smart contracts can be used to commit crimes. they [criminals] It can benefit from the privacy features of blockchains and also use trust models – in addition to the fact that smart contracts are in principle unstoppable.

CT: You don't focus on crypto-related crimes, like the theft of private keys, but the broader physical world crimes that you call your “calling card,” crime, murder, and arson. In this case, a malicious party introduces a blockchain-based smart contract to the killer.

Jules: When I was writing the novel, I thought that particular situation was something like 20 years ago. [i.e., before it was technically doable]. And that's because you need an AI tool that can interpret news articles and extract keywords from those articles to make reality real. Even three years ago, that seemed like a far-fetched prospect.

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But then, towards the end of writing the novel, ChatGPT quit. And all of a sudden, this situation is technically feasible. That doesn't mean you can start a fake contract today – you can't. We don't have the infrastructure. But now suddenly it means that we have to think about it in the near future.

CT: On page 34 of the novel, a character named Vitalik Buterin appears. He looks like the real-life Vitalik Buterin (co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain). He offers the main character an idea to foil the murder – a sort of “anti-cheat contract”.

Have you had such a conversation with Vitalik Buterin?

Jules: That's just fiction. I have worked with Vitalik, but not on this topic.

CT: How many years do we have until the type of fraudulent smart contract described in the novel?

Jules: It's a question of how to improve infrastructure and protections. I believe that we can develop defenses that will not only prevent these types of situations, but also enable the widespread use of AI and blockchain. I think the combination of the two technologies has a lot of potential, especially in the field of smart contracts.

CT: An example of how the two technologies can be combined – for good?

Jules: There is an opportunity to make smart contracts like the real world. [legal] Contracts. Now, there are still many problems. First, you need better natural language interfaces. Large language models hallucinate, for example. That can be a serious problem. But the potential is there.

CT: Of the responses to the book, have you been surprised by anything?

Jules: The book is based on real science and technology and includes research I've done in the past and some research currently being done in my group. One technology discussed in the book is something called multiblock flash lending. [i.e., a proof that a borrower’s contract would pay back a loan a short time later, like a ZK-proof], which is related to the project of my Ph.D. Students are working.

My doctoral student read the book and said, you know, the book includes applications of this technology that we hadn't considered in our research. We have to put that in our paper. And suddenly, the conversation between my research and the book became two-way. It actually became a conversation.

CT: In the case of blockchain-based oracles, your protagonist says on page 15:

“If we are to break the Wall Street machine, break the power of Big Tech, and rebuild a just world, oracles are the main tools in our hands.”

Is that Ari Jules speaking?

Juels: My character has somewhat more extreme views than I do. He's a bit of an idealist, and realizes that for smart contracts to do anything interesting they need to know what's going on in the real world.

Roman is not à clef. There's only one character that matches up to a real person, and that's one of the villains.

CT: You recently wrote an article with your Cornell University colleague Eswar Prasad on an interesting use case for blockchain, a “backup proof” protocol or application that “helps prevent disasters like FTX.” He also writes on the paper “Returning the balance to innovation” on smart contracts and blockchain technology.

Are we overly concerned about the value of cryptocurrencies at the expense of building things?

Jules: The narrative is completely skewed by money. The point we will raise in the article is the ancient accounting fraud that Sam Bankman-Fried did. There was nothing related to blockchain technology. Part of the problem here is that the financial side of things doesn't reflect such a deep reservoir of innovation — all of the technology's promise.

I worry that politicians only see the dark side of this technology and don't realize that very important fundamental innovations are happening not only in blockchain technology, but also in areas such as functional cryptography such as zero-knowledge proofs. In the past few years they have come on leaps and bounds, applications in the blockchain realm are the impetus.

CT: Oracle is not just about technology, your character says; They are the “blood of the smart contract revolution.” They put smart terms on truth, and in a society where justice and truth are threatened, they can be “a force for good.” Like the ancient oracle Delphi?

Jules: The Oracle of Delphi played an important role in Greek history. One of the roles that communities play when disagreements arise over major political decisions is consensus building. Should we get a colony? Shall we go to war? Should we destroy our enemies?

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So it served not only as a source of truth but also as a consensus. I would love to see blockchain oracles play a positive social role as well. And that's a big wish, isn't it?

But one of the reasons for including Oracle of Delphi in the novel is to look at what blockchain legends can be and the positive effects they can have if they are developed in the right direction.