In terms of crypto, what is a smart contract?
In: Economics
When you create a transaction it is put on the public blockchain so everyone knows your address value has changed. You can put some code there to make specific transactions only happen if other requirements are met. Some of those requirements could be waiting a set time, or sending a different transaction. Using these, crypto can become more like a bank without needing any centralized authority to keep people honest.
A good example would be trading between 2 coins. If you wanted to trade btc for eth, but you don’t trust the other guy to send their side of the deal, you can send your side as a smart contract that only executes when the other transaction is sent.
Basically a smart contract is just a program that is added to a blockchain. Once it’s added, it automatically runs and cannot be changed. One example is, say, an inheritance. You create a program that takes, as input, a notarized death certificate, then initiates a transfer of some cryptocurrency. You compile that program and add it to the block chain. Once it is there, the program is available to be executed as written.
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