This content originally appeared on HackerNoon and was authored by Ricardian
:::info Authors:
(1) Christopher D. Clack, Centre for Blockchain Technologies, Department of Computer Science, University College London;
(2) Vikram A. Bakshi, Investment Bank CTO Office, Barclays;
(3) Lee Braine, Investment Bank CTO Office, Barclays.
:::
Table of Links
2 Foundations and 2.1 Terminology — “smart contracts”
2.4 The semantics of contracts
3.2 The design landscape for Smart Contract Templates
4 Summary and Further Work and References
2.2 Automation
We say that a smart contract is “automatable” rather than that it is “automated” because in practice there may be parts of a legal agreement whose performance requires human input and control. However, to be a “smart contract” we require that some part of the agreement is capable of being automated (otherwise it is not “smart”).
\ Automation is generally accomplished by the use of one or more computers. The phrase “by electronic means” is a synonym. Our definition of smart contract does not require that this automation occurs on a shared ledger, though that is certainly a possible and even probable method.
\ As an example of how automation might be achieved using smart legal contracts, Grigg [9] presents the Ricardian Contract triple of “prose, parameters and code”.[1] The legal prose is linked via parameters (name-value pairs) to the smart contract code that provides automation. For example, a software agent might have been developed that will be instantiated on a shared ledger and, once initiated, will proceed to undertake various transfers of value in accordance with the legal prose. The parameters are a succinct way to inform the code of the final operational details.
\ The code in this case would be suitable for a specific platform but we can imagine in the future that multiple platforms could be targeted from a single contract.[2]
\
:::info This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_Contract
\ [2] This could be achieved by, for example, using the list of parameters to connect the legal prose to a set of smart software agents, e.g. one agent per platform.
This content originally appeared on HackerNoon and was authored by Ricardian
Ricardian | Sciencx (2024-08-07T14:00:18+00:00) Smart Contract Templates: Foundations, Design and Research – Automation. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2024/08/07/smart-contract-templatesfoundations-design-and-research-automation/
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