Smart Contract Symposium to Convene in Times Square as “Completely New U.S. Government” Looms

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.....

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....

Eris Industries, which develops software that allows anyone to build secure, low-cost data infrastructure using blockchain and smart contract technology, has ordered all its staff to depart the United Kingdom due to what it calls “completely unnecessary” surveillance powers on data included in the government’s reintroduced Investigatory Powers Bill. The reintroduced bill, which was blocked previously by the Conservative government’s Liberal Democrat coalition partners, will require internet companies to give security agencies access to encrypted conversations of suspected terrorists and....

Solidity and EVM make smart contracts available to every developer out there, regardless of experience. This is a good way to boost innovation in the smart contract space, but may not yield the best results in the initial stages. The recent debacle surrounding The DAO has shed an interesting spotlight on smart contract technology. Since individual developers wrote the entire concept of this project, it looks like smart contracts are not completely trustless. There is still a lot of work to be done before this technology is ready for mainstream adoption. Not everyone is capable of – or....

In 2021, many smart contract platforms competed for users’ attention and attempted to be the next Ethereum killer. The terms DeFi, GameFi, and NFT, have been all over the media lately, and any of these would not be possible without smart contracts. As more smart contract platforms are introduced, it becomes hard for newcomers to […]