Ledgers: Uses of Blockchain Smartcontracts - Article

Uses of Smart Contracts:

Blockchain Smartcontracts can be used in almost all fields, starting from healthcare to supply chain to financial services. Some examples are as follows:

Voting system:

Smartcontracts provide a secure environment making the voting system less susceptible to manipulation. Votes using smartcontracts would be digital ledger-protected, which is extremely difficult to decode.

Moreover, smartcontracts could increase the turnover of voters, which is historically low due to the inefficient system that requires voters to line up, show identity, and complete forms. Voting, when transferred online using smartcontracts, can increase the number of participants in a voting system.

Healthcare Industry:

Blockchain can store the encoded health records of patients with a private key. Only specific individuals would be granted access to the records for privacy concerns. Similarly, research can be conducted confidentially and securely using smartcontracts.

All hospital receipts of patients can be stored on the blockchain and automatically shared with insurance companies as proof of service. Moreover, the digital ledger technology can be used for different activities, such as managing supplies, supervising drugs, and regulation compliance.

Supply chain Industry:

Traditionally, supply chains suffer due to paper-based systems where forms pass through multiple channels to get approvals. The laborious process increases the risk of fraud and loss.

Blockchain can nullify such risks by delivering an accessible and secure digital version to parties involved in the chain. Smartcontracts can be used for inventory management and the automation of payments and tasks.

Financial services Industry:

Smartcontracts help in transforming traditional financial services in multiple ways. In the case of insurance claims, they perform error checking, routing, and transfer payments to the user if everything is found appropriate.

Smartcontracts incorporate critical tools for bookkeeping and eliminate the possibility of infiltration of accounting records. They also enable shareholders to take part in decision making in a transparent way. Also, they help in trade clearing, where the funds are transferred once the amounts of trade settlements are calculated.

Cited Source: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/valuation/smart-contracts/

Ledger: Challenges of Blockchain Smartcontract - Articles

Source: blog.pwc.lu

Below are the few of the challenges of blockchain smartcontracts:

Time & Money: Smartcontracts cost time and money to write, Whether they're drafted by a lawyer or reviewed by one, or even if they are written by an HR professional, contracts require a good deal of energy and are not an inexpensive undertaking.

Immutable: One of the main challenges blockchains faces is the immutability of smart contracts. Immutability means that the rules of a protocol cannot be modified once smart contracts are deployed on the blockchain. It is the truth that they assist in locking out the bad actors that may change the smartcontract information.

Usability challenges: Unlike traditional software development, smartcontracts require developers to have business knowledge and understand non-traditional programming languages, primarily Solidity. They also must comprehend formal methods of cryptography and networking.

Attacks: Attacks such as the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) attack and the Parity Wallet hack have cost millions of dollars simply as a consequence of naïve bugs in the smart contract code. 

Impact challenges: Visa at present can handle around 24,000 transactions every second. Ethereum, the largest blockchain for smart contracts, can handle only 14 transactions a second. To increase the impact and efficiency of smartcontracts in our society, the speed of information sharing on the blockchain needs to accelerate, the security needs to be bolstered, and its accessibility to coders and the public alike needs to increase.

Ledger: Advantages of Blockchain Smartcontract - Articles

Autonomy: The benefit of blockchain smartcontract is that they are decentralized in nature. They are direct dealings between parties and do not require the involvement of any third party in the process. This allows smartcontract to be transparent.

Accuracy: Smartcontracts are based on the requirement that all the terms and conditions are recorded explicitly.

Transparency: The Smartcontract build trust and transparency between two parties by using blockchain technology that it minimizes the dispute cases to zero. The possibility of a disagreement is avoided by the certainty and lack of between-the-lines terms in a smartcontract.

Record keeping: The blockchain stores all smartcontract transactions in chronological order and makes them accessible, along with the full audit trail. To provide complete secrecy, the parties involved can be safeguarded cryptographically.

Fraud-less: Identification and decrease of fraudulent activities. The blockchain stores smart contracts. It is extremely difficult to forcefully alter the blockchain since it requires a lot of compute. A smartcontract breach can also be discovered by network nodes, and in that case, the attempt is flagged as invalid and not recorded in the blockchain.

Fault-tolerance: Because no single person or organisation controls the digital assets, one-party dominance and situations in which one part pulls out do not occur. Additionally, because the platform is decentralised, the contract is still in place even if one node disconnects from the network.

Increased trust: Smartcontracts are automatically carried out and upheld. These agreements are also unchangeable, unbreakable, and incontrovertible since they are immutable.

Cost-efficiency: The use of smartcontracts reduces expenses by doing away with the necessity for middlemen (brokers, attorneys, notaries, witnesses, etc.). reduces paperwork as well, saving money and producing less waste.

Ledger: Features of Blockchain Smartcontract - Article

 

Distributed Ledger Smartcontracts:

These are very simple programs with conditions in it, stored on blockchain to run till the condition is met. This digital program used to automate the execution of an agreement between the parties allowing them to perform successful transactions without any involvement of central authority / agency. 

While I was checking through the Internet on the Features of Smartcontract, I have come across below list of points and they are unique in a way based on my understanding when compared with smartcontracts controlled central governing authority / agency.

Below are the few of the Features of Ledger Smartcontracts:

Immutable: Once deployed smart contract cannot be changed, it can only be removed as long as the functionality is implemented previously.

Distributed: Everyone on the network is guaranteed to have a copy of all the conditions of the smart contract and they cannot be changed by one of the parties. A smart contract is replicated and distributed by all the nodes connected to the network.

Transparent: Smart contracts are always stored on a public distributed ledger called blockchain due to which the code is visible to everyone, whether or not they are participants in the smart contract.

Secure: Smart contracts can only perform functions for which they are designed only when the required conditions are met. The final outcome will not vary, no matter who executes the smart contract.

Some of the other Characteristics of ledger smartcontract:

Autonomy: There is no third party involved. The contract is made by you and shared between the parties. No intermediaries are involved which minimizes bullying and grants full authority to the dealing parties. Also, the smart contract is maintained and executed by all the nodes on the network, thus removing all the controlling power from any one party’s hand.

Customizable: Smart contracts have the ability for modification or we can say customization before being launched to do what the user wants it to do. 

Trustless: These are not required by third parties to verify the integrity of the process or to check whether the required conditions are met.

Self-verifying: These are self-verifying due to automated possibilities.

Self-enforcing: These are self-enforcing when the conditions and rules are met at all stages.

These features alone are not making Smartcontracts unique in the blockchain technology, Features along with Capabilities are main backbone for the distributed smartcontracts. I have posted an article on Capabilities for more information - "Ledger: Capabilities of Blockchain Smartcontract - Article " 

Source: 

[0] https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/smart-contracts-in-blockchain/

Ledger: What is Blockchain Smartcontract - Article

Smart contracts are simply programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met. They typically are used to automate the execution of an agreement so that all participants can be immediately certain of the outcome, without any intermediary's involvement or time loss.

How the information in the Distributed Ledger smartcontracts are stored?

Distributed Ledger Technology stores the information in a secure and accurate using advanced cryptography technology. All the information stored in this can be accessed using "keys" and cryptographic signatures. Once the information is stored, it becomes an immutable database and is governed by the rules of the network.

What exactly we store on the blockchain...!

Ledger technology in blockchain is used to store information about the transactions, share the transaction data across network, Synchronize the data across distributed network allowing multiple participants involved in blockchain and keeping the up to-date. For more information on the features of smartcontract, I have posted an article " Ledger: Features of Blockchain Smartcontract - Article " 

Source: 

[0] https://www.ibm.com/in-en/topics/smart-contracts