Smart Contract
Like many ideas in the blockchain industry, a general confusion shrouds so called ‘smart contracts’. A new technology made possible by public blockchains, smart contracts are difficult to understand because the term partly confuses the core interaction described. While a standard contract outlines the terms of a relationship (usually one enforceable by law), a smart contract enforces a relationship with cryptographic code. Put differently, smart contracts are programs that execute exactly as they are set up to by their creators.
Smart contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller is directly written into lines of code. The code and the agreements contained therein exist across a distributed, Blockchain network.