CryptoIntermediate

Smart Contract

a.k.a. Smart contracts

A vending machine made of code: put in the right thing and it hands out the result. No clerk, no excuses.

In plain English

A program stored on a blockchain that runs automatically, exactly as written, whenever its conditions are met.

A smart contract is code living on a blockchain such as Ethereum. It can hold money and follow rules: "if A sends 100 tokens, send B this; if the deadline passes, refund A." Once deployed, it runs exactly as written, and nobody, not even its creator, can usually step in and change the outcome.

Smart contracts power tokens, NFTs and everything in DeFi. They're "smart" only in the sense that they're automatic. If the code has a bug, the contract will faithfully execute the bug, and hackers have drained huge sums that way.

Don’t be that stickman

Assuming a contract is safe because it's 'on the blockchain'. The chain guarantees the code runs; it doesn't guarantee the code is any good.

Keep this word for good

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