Smart Contracts

The term ‘smart contract’ was coined by Nick Szabo. In his first paper about smart contracts (1994), he describes them as follows:

A smart contract is a computerized transaction protocol that executes the terms of a contract. The general objectives of smart contract design are to satisfy common contractual conditions (such as payment terms, liens, confidentiality, and even enforcement), minimize exceptions both malicious and accidental, and minimize the need for trusted intermediaries. Related economic goals include lowering fraud loss, arbitration and enforcement costs, and other transaction costs.

Although smart contracts definitely cannot replace all areas of the legal system, they certainly have the potential to simplify, optimise or even replace many outdated practices in which financial liabilities and commitments play a major role.

Trusdee’s default smart contracts DApp elevates the capabilities and potential of smart contracts to an unprecedented level, thus propelling us closer to Nick Szabo’s original vision. It possesses various unique features, such as:

• Access to external data
  • Smart contracts on Trusdee have full access to public information on Trusdee and the internet.
  • The purpose of external data access is not to introduce external trusted third parties as a source of truth, but to enable advanced use cases.
• Event Triggers
  • Time-dependent triggers (i.e. cron jobs)
  • Internal Trusdee platform triggers
  • External third-party triggers (i.e. webhooks)
• Simple and safe ways to update contracts
  • Several innovative update models are available to ensure a safe update procedure for different use cases.
  • Before a smart contract is created, the parties involved agree on an update model. This update model is specified upon the smart contract’s creation and cannot be changed thereafter.
• Maximum security for every use case
  • We noticed that people have a different understanding of security when it comes to smart and automated contracts. To accommodate everyone’s needs, just like for updates of smart contracts, there will also be several innovative security models.
  • Before a smart contract is developed, the parties involved agree on a security model that is best suited to their particular use case.
• Confidentiality of information
  • Smart contracts can be marked as private. Terms of private contracts can only be seen and executed by the Trust-Nodes of the contract’s parties.
  • To ensure accountability of the Trust-Nodes involved, the contract’s fingerprint (hash) is broadcast to the entire network.
  • Only in the event of a breach of contract can the aggrieved parties make the contract public to all network operators in order to hold the fraudulent node(s) accountable.
• No impact on platform scalability
  • Smart contracts only need to be processed by the Trust-Nodes of the related parties. Consequently, the smart contracts DApp does not slow down the network, and as a result, it does not impede scalability (as is the case with most current smart contract platforms).
  • Nodes that are not engaged in executing a smart contract solely need to verify that no overspending occurs. This verification can be performed without knowledge of the smart contract terms, and thus the process is as quick as verifications of standard transactions.
• Full contract transparency for all participating parties
  • Built-in state explorer (similar to Etherscan, but built-in, decentralised and user-friendly)
  • Contract visualisation that makes the terms (i.e. the source code) of smart contracts easy to understand even for non-tech users.