Smart contracts represent the very best automation has to offer the market
I’ve been waiting for businesses to finally realize how much potential smart contract stand to be for our economy for years. However, the market’s embrace of this astonishing new technology has been less than enthusiastic.
Despite the fact that smart contracts hold huge amounts of promise, critics continuously assert that they’re still a far-off development unlikely to reshape the contemporary business world.
Those critics couldn’t be more wrong. Businesses have finally solved the problems plaguing smart contracts, which will soon be ubiquitous in the market.
Here’s how smart contracts became a miraculous tool for business owners everywhere.
We always lacked technology…until now
The biggest obstacle in the path of smart contracts to date has been the lack of viable technological solutions to the myriad of problems that plague such an idea.
Smart contracts were first posited as a clever, reliable way to have legal contracts change with the ebb and flow of time itself. It was posited that certain smart contracts could entirely automate the transfer process between two parties when they were exchanging cryptocurrencies, for instance.
While this seemed unimportant to many, I’ve always been confident that blockchain-powered smart contracts have the potential to open new doors for entrepreneurs.
The basic details behind smart contracts are relatively easy to understand. First and foremost, you need to know that a smart contract is nothing more than a programmable line of code. However, this does not make it any less legally binding.
The feature of smart contracts that’s always amazed me the most is their reliance on “IFTTT logic,” or “if-this-then-that.”
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These contracts have code in them that tells them how to adjust the fine text of the agreement in the event an agreed-upon condition by both parties occurs. All of these revisions are done without third-parties needing to chime in, which drastically lowers the legal costs of making a business deal.
The concept behind smart contracts has lingered in our collective consciousness for decades now, but it wasn’t until the past few years that blockchain technology finally caught up with our ambitions to make the prospect of a smart contract-based economy possible.
Even classic legal institutions like the American Bar Association are beginning to warm up and explore the idea of smart contracts. As they do this they begin to understand which way the wind blows in the legal arena.
Automation helps everyone
My biggest pet peeve when it comes to smart contracts is the absurd assertion made by some that they’ll only benefit the already-wealthy. This belief is erroneously founded in the notion that rich corporations can leverage their resources to make better use of smart contracts than their smaller opponents, which would give them an upper hand in the legal arena.
As a matter of fact, however, it’s increasingly indisputable that automation helps just about everyone, and smart contracts, in particular, can be leveraged by small businesses to modernize their operations at an affordable cost.
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Already, a plethora of business interests is already dabbling with blockchain technology, which is the vital precursor to most smart contract tech we have today.
The businesses which are already making use of blockchain inhabit nearly every industry; from Airbnb to Slock, companies around the market are waking up to realise the potential of this cutting-edge technology.
Nonetheless, while exciting cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin keep grabbing international headlines, other real technological developments like the rise of the smart contract, are unfortunately going unnoticed.
The time to embrace smart contracts is now
Love them or hate them; smart contracts represent the way that business will be conducted in the 21st century. By harnessing the power of encrypted technology like blockchain, companies have shown, we can reliably remove the need for third-parties in an astonishingly large myriad of legal cases.
As countless others have already realised, the early applications of blockchain technology to produce headline-grabbing cryptocurrencies was just the first step of a marathon that’s yet to come. The underlying blockchain-ledgers which have already shaken up our markets so much will continue to expand and improve, meaning smart contracts will only get wiser themselves as the years go on.
The future of smart contracts essentially rests with the continued development of blockchain technology, so small business owners, aspiring entrepreneurs, and corporation professionals should all take some time to read up on how blockchain and smart contracts will keep evolving in the near future.
By far the biggest challenge to smart contracts right now is scalability; for years, the biggest problem associated with this technology was the challenge of getting enough people on board in the first place to make it work.
Businesses everywhere are beginning to wise up, however, and it’s safe to say that the scalability fears that haunted us yesterday will be scarcely remembered in a future dominated by smart contracts.
I’m tired of hearing about how robots and technology are coming to “steal our jobs” – in reality; technological progress has great things in store for us.
Also Read: What are the limitations of smart contracts, and how can service-based organisations address these?
Smart contracts can help businesses cut down on legal costs as well as allow business owners to have a peaceful sleep, assured that their digital agreements are binding and encrypted.
When you next hear about blockchain technology, stop thinking about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and start imagining a wonderful future dominated by smart contracts that change as our legal circumstances do.
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