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4 Ways Smart Contracts Will Change The World
Words Lola Ayoola
Fiona BurrageIf you’ve never heard of a smart contract, you can think of them as normal contracts, just digital! Software Developer Lola Ayoola explains how smart contracts are set to change the world. It works the same as traditional contracts however, smart contracts are stored inside blockchain and because of this, they are changing the world as we know it. When a smart contract is placed into blockchain it becomes immutable which means that once created, it can never be changed or tampered with. Smart contacts are also distributed meaning no one in particular is in control making for a highly secure way of creating contracts.
Cyber Security
As technology has become a vital part of our everyday lives, the importance of the security of the various platforms used by individuals and business is of the utmost importance. With cyber attacks becoming highly complex and more sophisticated by the day, valuable information like intellectual property, personal identity information & financial data constantly require new ways of being kept safe and secure. This is where smart contract technology becomes a game changer in the cyber security industry. Data put into a blockchain via a smart contract would be incredibly difficult to hack, steak and hold to ransom much like in 2019, where an entire city’s computer systems was held ransom by cyber criminals for $1million dollars.
Decentralisation
Another benefit of using smart contracts is that they are decentralised, meaning that no central authority or government has any power or regulation in managing them. This is beneficial because firstly, the network is run on thousands of computers which means there isn’t a large negative impact to the network if one computer or even ten goes down. Additionally, decentralisation becomes an open development platform, this means new tools, services and platforms can be built creating new industries and companies much like the world wide web created a new [dot]com industries that birth companies like Google.
Legal Profession
When you first hear about contracts, what may first come to mind is lawyers. For lawyers, a huge part of their profession is based around contracts, whether that’s drawing them up for a client or giving advice based on the terms of a contract. But how does the world of smart contracts affect these tasks that many lawyers do on a day to day basis. It has been predicted that smart contracts could possibly wipe out the need for lawyers completely while other experts believe that the integration of both lawyers and smart contracts is the way forward. Either way smart contracts are on track to completely disrupt the legal profession as we know if.
Financial Services
We first started understanding blockchain with the emergence of cryptocurrencies in 2009, this new financial product shook up the market and introduced something completely brand new to the world. With smart contracts the future of traditional banking looks completely different to how it operates today. With investment banking it has the potential to shorten trading and settlement times tremendously which will intern create a huge amount of growth resulting in billions more revenue per year. Consumers will benefit also from retail banks adopting smart contracts as the saving from lowered processing cost will be passed down to customers.
Overall we are in a time where new and exciting technology is constantly changing the world around us right before our eyes and the future of what smart contracts can become is slowly but surely being realised and soon will become a key part in all our everyday lives.
Lola Ayoola, Software Developer
