智能合約

Smart Contract

What Is a Smart Contract?

A smart contract is a self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. The code and the agreements contained therein exist across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network. The code controls the execution, and transactions are trackable and irreversible.

Smart contracts permit trusted transactions and agreements to be carried out among disparate, anonymous parties without the need for a central authority, legal system, or external enforcement mechanism.

While blockchain technology has come to be thought of primarily as the foundation for bitcoin​, it has evolved far beyond underpinning the virtual currency.

How Do Smart Contracts Work?

Smart contracts were first proposed in 1994 by Nick Szabo, an American computer scientist who invented a virtual currency called “Bit Gold” in 1998, fully 10 years before the invention of bitcoin. In fact, Szabo is often rumored to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous inventor of bitcoin, which he has denied.

Szabo defined smart contracts as computerized transaction protocols that execute terms of a contract. He wanted to extend the functionality of electronic transaction methods, such as POS (point of sale), to the digital realm.

In his paper, Szabo also proposed the execution of a contract for synthetic assets, such as derivatives and bonds. Szabo wrote: “These new securities are formed by combining securities (such as bonds) and derivatives (options and futures) in a wide variety of ways. Very complex term structures for payments can now be built into standardized contracts and traded with low transaction costs, due to computerized analysis of these complex term structures.”

Smart Contract Example

Here is the code for a basic smart contract that was written on the Ethereum blockchain. Contracts can be encoded on any blockchain, but ethereum is mostly used since it gives unlimited processing capability.

Initial Public Offering

What is IPO?

IPO refers to the process of offering shares of a private corporation to the public in a new stock issuance. Public share issuance allows a company to raise capital from public investors. The transition from a private to a public company can be an important time for private investors to fully realize gains from their investment as it typically includes share premiums for current private investors. Meanwhile, it also allows public investors to participate in the offering.

How an IPO Works

Prior to an IPO, a company is considered private. As a private company, the business has grown with a relatively small number of shareholders including early investors like the founders, family, and friends along with professional investors such as venture capitalists or angel investors.

When a company reaches a stage in its growth process where it believes it is mature enough for the rigors of SEC regulations along with the benefits and responsibilities to public shareholders, it will begin to advertise its interest in going public.

An IPO is a big step for a company as it provides the company with access to raising a lot of money. This gives the company a greater ability to grow and expand. The increased transparency and share listing credibility can also be a factor in helping it obtain better terms when seeking borrowed funds as well.

IPO shares of a company are priced through underwriting due diligence. When a company goes public, the previously owned private share ownership converts to public ownership, and the existing private shareholders’ shares become worth the public trading price.

Share underwriting can also include special provisions for private to public share ownership. Generally, the transition from private to public is a key time for private investors to cash in and earn the returns they were expecting. Private shareholders may hold onto their shares in the public market or sell a portion or all of them for gains.

Meanwhile, the public market opens up a huge opportunity for millions of investors to buy shares in the company and contribute capital to a company’s shareholders’ equity. The public consists of any individual or institutional investor who is interested in investing in the company.

Initial Coin Offering

What Is an ICO?

ICO is the cryptocurrency industry’s equivalent to an initial public offering (IPO). A company looking to raise money to create a new coin, app, or service launches an ICO as a way to raise funds.

Interested investors can buy into the offering and receive a new cryptocurrency token issued by the company. This token may have some utility in using the product or service the company is offering, or it may just represent a stake in the company or project.

How an ICO Works

When a cryptocurrency startup wants to raise money through ICO, it usually creates a whitepaper which outlines what the project is about, the need the project will fulfill upon completion, how much money is needed, how many of the virtual tokens the founders will keep, what type of money will be accepted, and how long the ICO campaign will run for.

During the ICO campaign, enthusiasts and supporters of the project buy some of the project’s tokens with fiat or digital currency. These coins are referred to the buyers as tokens and are similar to shares of a company sold to investors during an IPO.

If the money raised does not meet the minimum funds required by the firm, the money may be returned to the backers, at this point, the ICO would be deemed unsuccessful. If the funding requirements are met within the specified timeframe, the money raised is used to pursue the goals of the project.

Smart Contract and IPO

A smart contracts firm which could revolutionise the dispute resolution process has revealed plans to float on the London Stock Exchange.

By automating processes, the need for intermediaries and middlemen is reduced, resulting in cheaper, more efficient transactions at greater speed.

The protocol has come to the attention of major governments and corporates across the world and has already been presented to a number of Prime Ministers.

It has the potential to swiftly resolve disputes over data breaches, voting processes, cross-border payments and in the supply chain.

The Proof of Trust will become the only blockchain assurance company to be listed on the full market.

Decentralized Autonomous Organization

How DAOs work

Initially, Bitcoin was considered to be the first ever fully-functional DAO, as it has a pre-programmed set of rules, functions autonomously and is coordinated through a distributed consensus protocol. Since then, the use of smart contracts was enabled on the Ethereum platform, which brought the creation of DAOs closer to the general public and shaped their current look.

First of all, a set of rules according to which it will operate. Those rules are encoded as a smart contract, which is essentially a computer program, that autonomously exists on the Internet, but at the same time it needs people to perform task that it can’t do by itself.

Once the rules are established, a DAO enters a funding phase. This is a very important part for two reasons. Firstly, a DAO has to have some kind of an internal property, tokens that can be spent by the organization or used to reward certain activities within it. Secondly, by investing in a DAO, users get voting rights and subsequently the ability to influence the way it operates.

After the funding period is over and a DAO is deployed, it becomes fully autonomous and completely independent from its creators as well as anyone else for that matter. They’re open source, which means their code can be viewed by anyone. Moreover, all of the rules and financial transactions are recorded in the Blockchain. This makes DAOs fully transparent, immutable and incorruptible.

Once a DAO is operational, all the decisions on where and how to spend its funds are made via reaching a consensus. Everyone who bought a stake in a DAO can make proposals regarding its future. In order to prevent the network being spammed with proposals, a monetary deposit could be required to make one.

Subsequently, the stakeholders vote on the proposal. In order to perform any action, the majority needs to agree on doing so. The percentage required to reach that majority can vary depending on a DAO, as it can be specified in its code.

Essentially, DAOs enable people to exchange its funds with anyone in the world. This can be done in the form of an investment, a charitable donation, money raising, borrowing and so on, all without an intermediary. One potentially major problem with the voting system is that even if a security hole was spotted in an initial code, it can’t be corrected until the majority votes on it. While the voting takes place, said hackers can exploit a bug in the code.

What is a DAO token?

Each member is given a token which represents the shares of the DAO, these tokens can also be used to vote in the DAO to take a certain decision. The token is nothing but another kind of contract sunning on top of Blockchain. The more token an address has, the more control he will have on the DAO.

Non-Homogeneous Tokens

The idea of homogeneity, and the concept of homogeneity is defined as “can be replaced or replaced by another item of the same project. We think it will make things more complicated. To better understand the meaning of heterogeneous assets, just consider most of the assets you own. Your chair, mobile phone, laptop, and anything you can sell on Taobao. It’s all non-homogeneous.

Swapping is relative, it economy class, first class tickets. Each ticket is probably interchangeable on the same shift, but y applies to comparing multiple things. You cannot exchange first-class tickets in the form of business class tickets. Even the chair you sit in can be used interchangeably with the same type of chair, unless you have developed some special accessories for a specific chair. Interestingly, the definition of homogeneous assets can also be subjective.

Going back to the ticket example, someone who cares about sitting by the window or aisle seat may think that two Economy Class tickets are not interchangeable. Similarly, a penny coin may be worth a penny to me, but more valuable to a coin collector. We will see that some of these nuances become very important when representing these items on the blockchain.

Mysterious Cat

Kevin Abosch reported that a dastardly heist had been committed in one of his on-chain installations, an Ethereum wallet-turned-artwork titled “Stealing The Contents of This Wallet Is a Crime” (2018).

Abosch tokenized himself in a process involving the artist’s own blood to distribute 10 million tokens with the ‘IAMA’ ticker. Abosch made it clear, however, that this cat burglary would not be the start of a larger NFT collectibles or art collection.

In fact, as the conversation turned to the state of blockchain-based art, he expressed dismay with a number of ongoing trends, starting with valuations of digital art being rooted primarily in their rarity. Too many are buying as an investment, he said, hoping to resell at a later date among even more frenzied NFT-mania.

Cryptovoxels

The Cryptovoxels community is made up of mainly developers, artists and metaverse evangelists. There is already a lot of the communtiy who hang out in the virtual world, with regular meetups to which encourage open discussion.

Sandbox

The Sandbox is a community-driven platform where creators can monetize voxel assets and gaming experiences on the blockchain.

Much like physical sandboxes act as safe and isolated playpens for children where imagination meets creation, developers of all sorts use virtual sandboxes as testing environments equipped with various tools for experimenting, testing, debugging, and creating objects, such as videogames elements.

When powered by the blockchain, the term “sandbox” becomes more than a place to play or test. It expands into an entire game-oriented ecosystem, connecting users from all over the world using a blockchain, opening the gate into the Metaverse, where a player, using his cryptocurrency tokens, creates a world of digital splendor in The Sandbox universe.

Opensea

What is Opensea?

OpenSea is a marketplace for digital goods, including collectibles, gaming items, digital art, and other digital assets that are backed by a blockchain like Ethereum. On OpenSea, you can buy, sell, and trade any of these items with anyone in the world.

OpenSea is currently the largest general marketplace for user-owned digital goods, with the broadest set of categories , the most items, and the best prices for new categories of items.

How does Opensea Work?

How does it work? To get started with OpenSea, simply plug in a Web3 wallet like MetaMask and go to the Browse tab. The application will automatically search your wallet for all the collectibles you have and the assets you need (like Ether) to buy items in the marketplace.