A smart contract is a digital protocol that allows facilitating, verifying, and enforcing negotiations or performance of a contract. It also allows exchanging revenue, property, shares, or anything valuable to both sides. This contract also brings enormous transparency and, at the same time, is free of conflict.
Some even compare smart contract technology to a vending machine. For example, if you need to make any transaction, you go to an agent that is between both or more parties – a notary, a bank, a lawyer. You pay those and wait while you get the needed document for the transaction. Unlike this, smart contracts technology allows you to add any cryptocurrencies into the vending machine, and the transaction is completed in less than a second. Also, they can define and implement rules and penalties and enforce those obligations.
Smart contract technology can be implemented in multiple business situations when third parties are needed.
Many businesses in the past went back and forth while waiting for approvals for both internal and external issues. One Blockchain ledger can make all of this go away and also can save businesses from lawsuits and settlement delays.
It is possible that everything in the future would be automated. This world has already got smart cars, smart glasses, smartphones, and why not smart contracts that will bring significant help? For example, smart contracts can be used in smart cars and smart cities for detecting abnormalities. Also, they would be able to fix parking issues, responsible accident drivers, and many more.
Real Estate is also one category in which smart contracts can help. Smart contracts here dismiss mediators like newspapers, websites, and agencies to advertise the place you want to sell or rent. The ledger will cut the additional costs here. The only thing that one has to do is pay via bitcoin and encodes the contract on the ledger.
Blockchain, with a private key, can be used to store personal health records. Receipts of surgeries and checkups can also be stored on a Blockchain and sent to insurance companies. Supervising drugs, regulation compliance, testing results, health care supplies, and many more could also be potential users of the ledger as well.
The programming language used for smart contracts is called Solidity, and all of them are written on it. It is running on Ethereum Virtual Machine on Blockchain. It is made to target the Ethereum Virtual Machine, and also its syntax is similar to that of JavaScript. Solidity is easy for programmers, especially to those that already have the technical knowledge and many programming skills.
Their use is beneficial, and in the future, many businesses will, for sure, use them. For now, they remain new technology, not well investigated, and with a lot of unknown vulnerabilities. There are too many questions that should be asked before people use them daily.
