The word transaction comes with a lot of context from blockchains. We don’t really mean to bring this context to Taiga, it might be confusing for both blockchainers and taigers. At the same time calling both structures “partial transaction” might be confusing because they are not the same structure in the current taiga terminology and are not always partial
I like agreement a lot and also harmony! How about:
Promise (partial promise)
It’s sort of similar to an agreement in the sense that you promise to give/receive something but it can be partial depending on the situation.
My understanding is that Taiga has a more relational view of “things” as being actually processes that are constantly in flux whereas blockchains are really about reifying relationships as objects (i.e. a transaction or a transactional view).
Hence promise → notes (expressing IOUs) → intents feels more within the same epistemological lense.
I’m trying to understand what is the difference between an intent and a transaction.
What I understand so far is:
transaction = you specify HOW to do what you want to do (hence the clunkiness);
Intent = you specify WHAT you want, but don’t care how to achieve it and then solvers do it for you, which is way more elegant in my mind.
Yep, that is a correct understanding of the difference
Hence promise → notes (expressing IOUs) → intents
Note that we might (likely) rename notes and a bunch of other Taiga objects to correspond to higher-level architecture terms. In that case, notes will become resources
Thinking a bit more about this, there are multiple aspects that we might want to reflect in the chosen name:
atomicity
agreement in a flat-structured set of participants
balance
In this context, what I don’t like about “promise” is that it gives a feeling of asymmetry. E.g. thinking about ‘agreement’ I imagine multiple parties with no hierarchy, on the other hand ‘promise’ gives a feeling of one party being distinguished from the rest
(partial harmony)