Smart Contract Development And Commissioning
Firstly, Blockchain and smart contracts have become a subject of interest over the past few years. Cryptocurrencies are growing in price, generating tons of money and a whole new world of possibilities. Anything related to blockchain and Bitcoin has turned into a modern gold rush for both users and developers. According to etherscan, 49% of all the transactions with Ether cryptocurrency are carried out within smart contracts.
Just like anything related to finances, the market started looking for ways of regulation. As a step in that direction, smart contracts started gaining popularity. But what are they and how do they work?
The next question to ask is what is Smart Contract?
A smart contract is a program, a piece of code that helps to regulate transactions with digital currencies and assets between parties. However, a smart contract is created in such a way that the execution of a contract is automatic if all the conditions were met. If something goes wrong, the contract gets revoked and the asset exchange is not performed. This algorithm secures possessions of all the parties involved making sure there are no losses. Smart contracts are based on the blockchain technology, so the piece of code that describes a smart contract is fully transparent to everyone on the blockchain. Many smart contracts are based on Ethereum blockchain. To create an Ethereum smart contract, Solidity language is used which is similar to JavaScript in its syntax.
Besides, there is one more major advantage of smart contracts: using a smart contract does not require turning to a third party to ensure that all parties execute their parts of the contract.
Developing Smart Contracts
If you have decided it’s time for you to try out the benefits of smart contracts for yourself, there are a few things that you need to consider before you start.
Consider limitations of smart contracts
If you figured out that your answer to the previous question is “yes”, then it’s time to dive into a bit more details about smart contracts, specifically, their limitations.
- The contracts can only be applied to something that is completely executed within the digital world. The whole blockchain system is decentralized and is not legally regulated. Thus, any cases that need an involvement outside of the net should not be bound by these contracts.
- Smart contracts can operate only on the fact-based basis. They rely solely on objective facts and not on subjective judgments of parties.
- Their execution is performed in an “if-else” form or any other one similar to that. This does not give much space for sophisticated variations.
Plan
Now that you have an idea of what you can and cannot do with a smart contract, you can plan it out. It is crucial to understand what it is exactly that you want the contract to do. You can create a contract to verify transaction, transfer payment for a service, or perform a cryptocurrency exchange, and so on.
Find a trustworthy developer
This goes without saying, but it is extremely important who is going to build your contract. Even though smart contracts are based on the blockchain, they generally require at least some knowledge of the blockchain development.
Test it
Researchers from Singapore and the UK revealed that there are 34,200 smart contracts that are vulnerable to hacker attacks. So, during and after your contract is built, testing will be a crucial part of the process to make sure that there are no exploits. Any bug in the contract can lead to loss of your resources or your customers’ money, as well as to the loss of reputation.
Thank you for reading
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