Apologies if this is a bit of an ELI5 request, but after many years I <i>still</i> don't understand the real-world uses of smart contracts. There was this post on HN a couple years ago, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19225857" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19225857</a>, and I still don't understand how any of those issues are addressed.<p>Specifically what I'm struggling to understand is that most (all?) real-world contracts require some information about the real world: The price of corn (or corn futures), whether the rental apartment was as described, whether the sneakers were authentic, etc. But whenever you need this real world information, at some point you need an oracle, or a consensus of oracles, and at that point I don't really see the point of using blockchain as you have to trust the oracles.<p>Would really appreciate if anybody could provide some info or links that explain how this problem is handled or solved. More importantly, would appreciate a single example of an actual smart contract that responds to events that happen in the real world.