Smart
Contracts are a leading trend in Blockchain technology today. If you are
thinking of building a career in the field, this article will help you with all
that you need to know to write your first smart contract!
Today’s
digital age has allowed two parties to enter into agreements without
third-party involvement. These digital contracts are processed by the
blockchain and stored on a public database. So, the transactions are trackable
and irreversible.
The term
‘Smart Contract’ was first proposed by American computer scientist Nick Szabo
back in 1996. It is a computer or digital protocol that facilitates, verifies,
and enforces the performance of a contract. As a general-purpose computation, a
smart contract resides on a Blockchain or distributed ledger.
In other
words, the contract is built into the code in the form of a computer program.
And the designated actors receive permission to execute the function of the
program. The predefined rules should be met for the successful execution of the
smart contract.
Take a
Purchase Order (PO), for instance. It is a simple contract between a buyer and
a seller. Certain conditions have to be fulfilled for carrying out the PO.
These specifications include successful payment by the buyer, delivery of goods
by the supplier as per the terms agreed upon at the time of purchase,
conditions for return, etc.
So, the
buyer can place an order and the supplier can fulfill the order in a digital
format. Over a computing network, all the actions are called transactions. And
all transactions are verified and enforced by the network. Once confirmed, the
transactions cannot be reverted.
Smart contract development environment
Before you write your first smart contract, set up the playground for its development. Going deeper into the blockchain world would be tricky without the knowledge of development environments. You can choose from the following alternatives
Remix IDE
It is an integrated development environment for building and testing smart contracts. This entirely online option is highly recommended for beginners, as it requires no installation. Moreover, it poses fewer challenges for prototyping and quick validating smart contracts.
Local Setup
Local machines provide yet another resource for smart contract development. The tools provide greater flexibility for enterprise-grade applications. And although it takes time to set up this environment, the selection of tools for Distributed Applications or DApps is a reasonably straightforward process.
Let us understand the steps of deploying a smart contract with Remix IDE.
- Create a new file by clicking on the plus icon.
- This will create an empty file. Click to open this file.
- Copy-paste the contract in this file.
- Click on the second icon that is just below the file icon in the left menu for the solidity compiler option to appear.
- Go to the compiler label and select the compiler version. After selecting the compiler version, click on the file. This will compile the smart contract.
- Following compilation, click on the compiler details button. This will provide you with two key information such as bytecode and application binary interface. Bytecode is one where the operational code of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and smart contract logic are converted into bytecode after compilation. The application binary interface is a JSON file that provides the details of all the methods exposed in the smart contract.
- To test the smart contract, it needs to be deployed. To deploy the smart contract, click on the icon in the left menu below the compile icon.
Using these steps, you can now create your first smart contract.
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