Top 5 Smart Contract platforms of 2022 -
how to choose one
How to pick the right platform to work with smart contracts and what are the main things to pay attention to? Mike Danilchyk, cryptoexpert and CTO of Web3soft leading blockchain company gives an overview on these and many other important questions.
- So, what are smart contracts, exactly?
A smart contract is a computer protocol that allows users to conduct transactions and control their execution using mathematical algorithms. In simple words, a smart contract is a sequence of actions integrated into the blockchain code. Smart contacts help to make transactions with cash, property and other assets transparently and without intermediaries.
For a better understanding you can imagine that you are selling real estate: you have a buyer that is willing to make a deal, you don’t know each other and don’t trust each other. In standard situations (without smart contacts), you need to involve professional lawyers, notaries, financial institutions, collect a huge number of documents, stand in queues and notarize them. All checks can take a lot of time and require you to pay decent money. When using smart contacts, there are only the buyer, the seller and the computer algorithm. The program itself checks whether all the terms of the transaction are fulfilled by its participants and, if the result is positive, it automatically distributes assets: real estate goes to the buyer and the money goes to the seller.
A smart contract is a computer protocol that allows users to conduct transactions and control their execution using mathematical algorithms. In simple words, a smart contract is a sequence of actions integrated into the blockchain code. Smart contacts help to make transactions with cash, property and other assets transparently and without intermediaries.
For a better understanding you can imagine that you are selling real estate: you have a buyer that is willing to make a deal, you don’t know each other and don’t trust each other. In standard situations (without smart contacts), you need to involve professional lawyers, notaries, financial institutions, collect a huge number of documents, stand in queues and notarize them. All checks can take a lot of time and require you to pay decent money. When using smart contacts, there are only the buyer, the seller and the computer algorithm. The program itself checks whether all the terms of the transaction are fulfilled by its participants and, if the result is positive, it automatically distributes assets: real estate goes to the buyer and the money goes to the seller.
- Where can smart contracts be used?
Let's outline the main areas in which the introduction of smart contracts will contribute to increasing the company's profits, improving the quality of provided services and the comfort of end users repeatedly.
Let's outline the main areas in which the introduction of smart contracts will contribute to increasing the company's profits, improving the quality of provided services and the comfort of end users repeatedly.
- Lending, rental properties. Today, buying and selling real estate is a process in which many interested parties participate. Real estate agents focus on making deals to achieve KPIs, banks focus on compliance, risk and creditworthiness assessment, home inspectors can get stressed when detecting and presenting problems related to making deals.Smart contracts will allow you to set the agreements and rules governing transactions yourself. You can not only decide how much money is transferred from one participant to another, but also set conditions for when and how to transfer money. The transaction will be carried out from a week to a minute or even a second if all parties have already met their obligations.
- Logistics. The transport industry can already today automate settlement processes between supply chain participants and switch to electronic document management fully.
- Insurance. The industry bears billions of dollars of unjustified expenses in the form of fraud every year. Blockchain will provide opportunities to establish an effective and transparent flow of information between the insurer and the insured.
- Healthcare. There are a huge variety of scenarios that can be implemented using smart contracts and most of them are related to the blockchain’s ability to exchange confidential data in an unprecedented way. Among the most demanded services are: electronic medical records, drug monitoring through the supply chain and anti-counterfeiting, distribution of donor organs and increased control over the analysis results.
- Game industry
- Transparency of the electoral process and other kinds of voting.
- How to choose the best platform?
To date, there are many services that provide the opportunity to create smart contracts and each of which has both pros and cons. Let's look at the 5 most reliable and convenient ones.
1.Ethereum
You can’t talk about smart contracts without mentioning Ethereum, the first blockchain system that supports the possibility of creating smart contracts. Today, this is the largest platform by market capitalization and, perhaps, one of the most reliable and referenced solutions.
The platform provides an ecosystem for the development of autonomous decentralized applications (dApps) and on its basis, the largest DeFi protocols such as Uniswap, MakerDAO, Compound, Aave have been created. The platform is supported by a huge community that was formed during the 7 years of Ethereum's existence.
Fors:
- The most widespread platform
- Contract creation flexibility allows to build the most complex smart contracts
- A large number of users provides sufficient computing power
- Based on the Turing-complete language Solidity
- Well-scalable.
Againsts:
- High gas fees
- Works on error-prone ERC-20 standard token: a user who sends tokens to a smart contract using the transfer() command irrevocably loses his money.
2.Polkadot
Polkadot is an ecosystem for smart contracts, dApps and tokens. The main feature of the platform is a unique architecture for data exchange and transformation between different blockchain systems. It provides the opportunity to create individualized sidechains for organizing interaction with public blockchain networks and protocols.
Fors:
- Can simultaneously process many current requests in several user chains, while the number of such chains can be increased as needed
- Heterogeneous sharding (the user chains connected to the main network may have a different functionality, process transactions in parallel and securely exchange data with each other)
- Easy chain update
- High speed
Againsts:
- Today, there are many services that solve the problem of blockchain compatibility. Consequently, high competition in the market makes it impossible to say for sure whether it will be successful and popular in the future.
Web3soft is an official partner and friend of Unique Network - the first NFT chain built in Polkadot & Kusama. Our combined experience and deep knowledge allow us to build the most effective solutions on the base of these services.
3. Hyperledger
The project, created by Linux Foundation in 2015 is the basis for creating business oriented smart contracts. The platform provides users with the option of building multi-layered configurations of the blockchain network, offering new opportunities for developers.
Fors:
- High reliability and bandwidth through private channels
- Go programming language
- Provides the ability to create chain codes in Java and JavaScript
Againsts:
- A small community, which is associated with a focus on corporate needs
- High entry threshold.
4.Stellar
Smart contracts presented by the Stellar project are qualitatively differ from the proposed, for example, by Ethereum. They are not Turing-complete and can be used to ensure agreements between MORE THAN TWO parties whose actions are supported by transactions.
Stellar provides a fast transaction confirmation system: all the process takes about 5 seconds (for comparison, on Ethereum it takes 3.5 minutes). In addition, the developers indicated an incredibly low transaction fee - for 100,000 transactions, the user must pay only 1 cent.
Fors:
- Fast transaction confirmation speed
- The ability to create smart contracts in any language
- Very low transaction fees
- An incomplete Turing system makes auditing easier and the system more secure.
Againsts:
- Limited functionality.
5.Solana
Solana is a fast–growing smart contract platform that is consistently among the top three leading platforms along with Ethereum and Polkadot.
Fors:
- Faster and cheaper than Ethereum
- It expands much faster than other most competing blockchains
- Use the LLVM system and the Rust programming language (that makes it one of the best decentralized networks for creating NFT solutions, DeFi projects and smart contracts)
- High level of environmental friendliness
- Low resource consumption and high sustainability
Againsts:
- There’s no verification of ownership
- No signature verification
- Inability to check external programs
- Integer overflow - the variables can only contain a specific range of values.
- There’s no verification of the account structure.
Choosing a platform for smart contracts you should take into account individual tasks, needs and budget of the project. Only a thorough analysis of the market and an assessment of the long-term objectives of every customer will create a unique effective solution. Also, we always take into consideration the technical maturity of the platform, development tools and the availability of well-documented literature. For today, smart contracts are still a new direction that requires high-quality study and growth.
- How can Web3soft help?
Our company is a recognized expert in blockchain services development and we are ready to share our experience in choosing a platform for smart contracts and on many other issues (see our SERVICES or leave a request for a quick consultation).
We offer consulting, development and maintenance of blockchain-based services and always strive to create exclusive solutions that allow our clients to become leaders in their niche.
Our company is a recognized expert in blockchain services development and we are ready to share our experience in choosing a platform for smart contracts and on many other issues (see our SERVICES or leave a request for a quick consultation).
We offer consulting, development and maintenance of blockchain-based services and always strive to create exclusive solutions that allow our clients to become leaders in their niche.