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What are Smart Contracts ?

  • A smart Contract is a program on the blockchain that lives in the contract state tree in a full node.
  • A contract runs on a virtual machine.
  • A contract is owned by an contract owner.
  • The contract owner creates a contract through posting a create contract transaction on the chain.
  • Alternatively an owner can attach a contract to an existing account through an attach contract transaction.
  • The contract creation transaction register an account as a contract. (One account - one contract)
  • No one will have the private key for accounts created with create contract.
  • Any user can call an exported function in a contract by posting a contract call transaction on the chain.
  • Contract can be written in a high level language which is compiled to the VM byte code.

How do I write them ?

Hop over to the sophia documentation and learn to write and deploy your first contract. Use AEstudio, the free web-IDE for writing and testing smart contracts on Aeternity!