Financial news

Year in, and year out, people continue to wonder how long the crypto hype is going to continue. The volatility of the market keep leading some to believe that the digital currency’s time has come to an end. But without fail, it always pops back up again… why?

This month at The Fintech Times we’re going to be looking at what makes digital currencies so popular. We will also be uncovering the emerging alternatives to cryptos and why the digital future looks so intriguing. Today, we examine the world of Smart Contracts and some of the use cases they can provide. 

Overhyped?

Alex Knight, Head of EMEA at DLT company, Baton Systems said: “Despite all the hype, very few smart contracts are being used in production today in institutional finance. However, Baton’s solution is live – processing and settling billions of dollars everyday. Our technology uses smart contracts and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) to enable counterparties to collaborate from the point of trade-matching, to bilaterally net FX trades, confirm netting with access to unified data in real-time and settle netted trades on a riskless Payment vs Payment (PvP) basis. Completing the entire post-trade process under the auspices of the legally binding Baton rulebook, using smart contracts we can increase efficiencies and speed throughout.”

Robert Hoogendoorn Head of Content at DappRadar, a dapp store, added: “Smart contracts can trade, store, destroy, combine, create etc. Depending on the nature of the software, they can do a number of things:

“Want to swap $10 of ETH for SAND? A smart contract will make sure the user provides $10 of ETH, it will get the required SAND tokens from the liquidity pool, and send those back to the user.

“An NFT series of collectible gorillas originates from a smart contract. Each gorilla gets its unique token code, while the entire collection exists under one smart contract.

“An example of game functionality would be when gamers find item X in a game, and need to bring it to an in-game character to receive award Z. The smart contract would take item X, destroy it, then mint award Z and send it back to the player.”

Charity

 Zach Bronstein, COO of Endaoment, who manage and encourage the charitable giving of digital assets, said: “Although smart contract technology is still in its nascency, there are already significant use cases worth mentioning. Let’s focus on charity: Endaoment.org uses a suite of smart contracts to underpin its Donor-Advised Fund platform. The contracts can receive tokens directly on the Ethereum blockchain, are able to liquidate those assets into USDC, and can then use that USDC to make wire payments to the recipient organisations that typically don’t have their own crypto wallets. In support of trustless tech, all this happens based on the logic built into the smart contracts that guarantee funds will be delivered to the charity associated.”

Into the real world

Blockchain security leaderboard CertiK CEO and co-founder, Ronghui Gu said: “The good news is we’ve progressed beyond case studies and onto real-world applications. It’s now absolutely possible to incorporate a DAO in the state of Delaware or Wyoming, buy decentralized insurance on your next flight that will automatically pay out if it’s delayed, or even tokenize real estate. While smart contracts are still an emerging technology, there are real things being built that leverage their unique attributes to make all sorts of commercial activity safer, fairer, and more efficient.”