Smart Contracts Alliance Aims to Help “Change the Landscape of Modern Business”

The Chamber of Digital commerce has launched an initiative to form an industry-leading Smart Contract Alliance (SCA). The announcement was made today, and its goal is to promote real-world applications for this novel technology. The Chamber of Digital commerce, a trade association comprised of industry leading companies representing the digital assets and blockchain sector, unveiled a new initiative called Smart Contract Alliance (SCA). The project aims to promote real world applications of this new “vital technology”, as the press release says: Smart contracts have the potential to....

China’s Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) will promote a national alliance chain to introduce smart contracts and blockchain-based services to digitize the securities and futures market. The announcement was made at the China Securities Industry Alliance Chain and OTC Alliance Chain Special Work Symposium in Beijing. Jiang Dongxing, deputy director of the Science and Technology Regulatory Bureau of the CSRC, stated this digitization is key for the future of the industry. China Aims to Digitize Financial Markets Using Blockchain The China Securities Regulatory....

Smart contracts can automate many different kinds of processes and operations, the most obvious being payment and actions conditional on payment. But the capabilities extend to many business and organizational activities. A white paper [PDF] by the Chamber of Digital Commerce with the support of the Smart Contracts Alliance presents 12 use cases of contracts for business and beyond. Nick Szabo in 1996 described a smart contract as “a set of promises, specified in digital form, including protocols within which the parties perform on these promises,” a definition that still describes the....

The Smart Contract Alliance, an initiative ran by the Chamber of Digital Commerce to promote real-world application of smart contracts, has announced the launch of the Smart Contract Symposium, a conference to take place in New York City on December 5th, 2016. Of particular note is that renowned cryptographer Nick Szabo, who coined the term “smart contracts,” will give the event’s keynote address. Szabo to Keynote New York Symposium. The Chamber expects to host over 250 executives from financial institutions and firms exploring this technology at Microsoft’s Time’s Square Headquarters.....

"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....