Smart Contracts – Support for Successful Businesses

Abstract

Smart contracts have been one of the hottest topics over the last few years. They represent a step forward in the progression of blockchains from a financial transaction protocol to an application that automatically implements the terms and conditions of a business agreement. A smart contract is a computer program that runs on a network that uses a consensus protocol that helps the network’s nodes make decisions about actions to follow, and is responsible for the network to be trustless. It ensures the automatic and direct transfer of digital currencies, goods, assets, or information between parties without the need for intermediaries. This paper aims to briefly present the smart contract technology, its advantages and disadvantages, as well as several areas that could gain important benefits by implementing new systems based on blockchain and smart contracts.

Keywords

• smart contracts
• blockchain
• hash code
• immutability
• consensus
• oracles