3 Things Smart Contracts Need Before They Can Really Take Off
Smart contracts hold tremendous promise as the 'killer app' for blockchains. If you're not familiar, a smart contract is a computer program that automatically executes the terms of a contract on a blockchain. In principle, you can use smart contracts for a wide variety of purposes, such as wireless service contracts, apartment and hotel room rentals, freelance work contracts, automating payments – anyplace you'd want to cut out the middle person. With more than $17bn in assets stored in just the top 10 cryptocurrencies, there currently is a huge opportunity to give existing blockchain....
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"The two things to know about smart contracts is that they’re dumb, and they’re not contracts." This statement from Harvard Berkman Center's Patrick Murck seems increasingly relevant in the wake of the collapse of The DAO. The ethereum-based fund was the largest smart contract issued to date, and its failure has led many to reconsider how ready the technology is for primetime. At their core, smart contracts facilitate decentralized applications by eliminating trust points. Because they automate existing processes, many believe smart contracts could someday lower costs across....
Smart contracts, a feature of "Bitcoin 2.0" technologies such as Ethereum, could soon operate on the Internet of Things (IoT), control objects in the physical world, and power a new decentralized version of the sharing economy, for example sharing services similar to Uber and Airbnb that operate in pure P2P mode without centralized management. Smart contracts represent a disruptive innovation with a huge potential. In 2001, legendary cryptographer Nick Szabo spoke of smart contracts that solved the problem of trust by being self-executing and having property embedded with information about....
With contributions from Zerado, FinTech Network have produced a whitepaper that looks at smart contracts and how they could improve efficiencies within the banking sector. The whitepaper highlights: How smart contracts aim to provide security that is superior to traditional contract law and ways they can reduce other transactional and administrative costs. The workings of Ethereum as one of the best examples of smart contracts in practice. Ways that smart contracts could benefit areas such as mortgages, clearing and settlement, KYC & bonds. How challenges with conceptual misalignment,....
No, smart contracts will not rid the world of lawyers, despite the greatest efforts of blockchain innovators. At least, that's according to Nick Szabo, the man widely credited with inventing the smart contract concept itself. During the keynote address at the Smart Contracts Symposium at Microsoft's New York headquarters this week, Szabo gave an update on the industry he helped create – a talk that was followed by a string of commenters from smart contract startups. Addressing a group of about 250 people (comprised largely of members of the blockchain trade association, the Chamber of....
Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, Founder and CEO of Bitnation, explains to Cointelegraph how smart contracts can lower costs of your business. Cointelegraph: What are Smart Contracts about? Susanne Tarkowski: Smart contracts are applications ‘living on’ the Blockchain, and therefore can’t be censored. Simple, immutable and autonomous applications, basically. As Primavera de Filippi eloquently phrased it during her talk at OuiShare Paris 2016 “Smart Contracts are neither smart nor contracts...”. But ironically, smart contracts are however ideally suited to be… well… contracts! In essence, your....