There’s more than one way to put code on a blockchain In most discussions about blockchains, it doesn’t take long for the notion of “smart contracts” to come up. In the popular imagination, smart contracts automate the execution of interparty interactions, without requiring a trusted intermediary. By expressing legal relationships in code rather than words,… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Smart contracts
Smart contracts and the DAO implosion
The tragic combination of inevitable bugs and immutable code Last week witnessed a catastrophic event in the Ethereum ecosystem, when The DAO, a smart contract less than two months old, began rapidly leaking funds to an unknown party. Looking at the current set of Ethereum contracts, filled with casinos and self-declared Ponzi schemes, this might… Read more »
Beware the impossible smart contract
The three most common smart contract misconceptions As the developers of a popular blockchain platform, we sometimes get asked whether Ethereum-like smart contracts are on the MultiChain roadmap. The answer I always give is: no, or at least not yet. But in the hype-filled world of blockchains, smart contracts are all the rage, so why… Read more »
Smart contracts: The good, the bad and the lazy
Why private blockchains should not be eager to run code I’m not a fan of the term “smart contracts”. For a start, it has been used by so many people for so many different things, that we should probably just ban it completely. For example, the first known reference is from 1997, when Nick Szabo used it… Read more »