We are now entering an exciting area for everyone especially computer programmers who can learn about smart contracts, the block chain and more.
Now up for debate…these are the Cryptos that have smart contract ability…. PolkaDot, Solana, Binance Smartchain, EOS, Ergo, Alogorand.
Cardano is said to be a platform that makes it easier to make smart contracts but is not really one itself.
So what is a smart contract?
This is a very complex area on the surface but we will try to break it down over several sections and quite a few videos.
Technically, a smart contract is a small amount of computer programming code that a programmer makes to work with a blockchain so that it will trigger some kind of action like buy or sell something based on an event happening.
Its like if you push a button then the doorbell rings.
In fact smart contracts are also refered to as “if this then that” for this simple reason.
In a way its like in the beginning of the stock market monkey business where computer experts could rapid fire big trade deals using computerized trading before everybody else figured it out.
Now smart chains done correctly are totally legitimate and useful tools and don’t always have to do with financial matters or financial contracts.
Right now you have young hot shot programmers who don’t need to know all that really much about languages like Python or Rust, rushing out and telling employers that they know all about smart contracts and can make their future employers bags of money.
This may or may not be true but make sure you have experts in these areas overseeing whatever your IT staff is writing for you.
Now lets explain a bit more about what is underneath the hood on smart contracts and why they are useful and powerful.
Its a part of the whole area called DeFi or decentralized finance and the big terms are decentralized and the term immutable.
Basically smart contracts are secure because they don’t just get done and verified on one central computer like a bank may do but they go to thousands of computers and once they go out then you can’t change the contract without it being known that someone is trying to change it.
The smart contract will appear on thousands of computers and the nature of the blockchain is that everyone can see some of the details of it and it can’t be hidden or denied that it took place.
Soyou pretty well can’t just chang it since its on thousands of computers so all you could do is ignore that first one and create a new one and direct people to it.
Now the word immutable is sort of similar in that.
Immutable basically means that you can’t change it.
Its all about what everyone is calling “decentralization”.
In the past when you wanted to get money from the bank you had to go in and get an account and everything was organized and in one place…it was centralized basically.
So Bitcoin came up with the idea that they could have a decentralized way of banking basically.
So smart contracts mean that you can have two or more parties do business without the third party intermediaries using the blockchain smart contract idea.
Most smart contracts are being built with languages that support the Ethereums EVM or virtual machine like Python, C++, Rust etc.
Cardano uses the Haskell language which has a very strong history in the academic world and has been used in Google and Facebook and some of the world’s major banks. Haskell is said to have a proven track record in the financial industry but does not have as many library routines and developers as other mainstream languages have.
Now since this whole area of smart contracts is so new as in basically 2020 or so…there is a feeding frenzy for the big companies to find programmers who know their way around this technology.
The big languages that you must learn are Rust, Solidity and Python and some Javascript or C++.
But the important thing is to understand how everything ties together.’
You must get familiar with places like Github and how to use discord servers because alot of the code will be there and when you are hired you will be the expert or among the experts in that company.
You will be using terms like DeFi (decentralized finance), Dapps, NFTs, hybrid and full smart contracts and more.
You will find that there are many companies that are creating their own spin off of the Ethereum block chains and some that are working with it.
Company names like Polka Dot, Polygon and Avalanche come up and you will need to know your way around crypto exchanges.
You will be getting onto exchanges and getting a wallet set up and transfering Ethereum onto sites like Metamask.
So we are soon going to have some new sections here for programming for smart contracts.
However…..apparently for some crazy reason, anyone can create their own smart contract in a matter of 20 minutes without any programming or technical skill by going to this site ExodHood. https://exohood.com/token-launchpad
(under construction Dec 17, 2021)