Technology

What Are Smart Contracts And How Do They Work? 7 2832

After hearing about the capabilities of the blockchain and its transparency and decentralization, the next term you’ll come up against is inevitably smart contracts. While you don’t need to know everything about the blockchain technology and how it works, it’s useful to get a feel for what a smart contract is. Not least because they are likely to become the new normal across all industries in the not-too-distant future. So, let’s cut to the chase:

What Are Smart Contracts?

A smart contract is a digital contract that verifies and enforces the agreed-upon terms between the parties involved. Smart contracts allow for fast and efficient transactions to take place without the need for lawyers or other third parties. They are self-enforcing and provide security and transparency, while reducing associated contracting costs and middlemen fees.

They also help with the speed of transactions, since smart contracts can ensure payments are made and terms are respected in real time, with no human interaction. Once a transaction has been made, it is irreversible and all transactions are trackable.

Smart contracts can be put to use in any area that can benefit from efficient documentation and reducing corruption. The agricultural industry is an example in which there are many stakeholders involved in the supply chain and much room for error and corruption.

With smart contracts, every stage of the supply chain is regulated and publicly available for anyone to see. Smart contracts are set to resolve the supply chain problem in the tequila industry, and more and more cryptocurrencies are making use of them.

Smart contracts, as with other aspects of the blockchain, allow for the democratization of many industries and the cutting out of middlemen. In the music industry, for example, smart contracts enable the artist to sell directly to the buyer and receive the payment they deserve. They can also be implemented to make sure that any royalties are automatically paid out, each time a song is played in a public place.

Supporting Instant Payments

Smart contracts are essential to supporting instant payments where certain conditions are met. As more and more enterprise blockchain applications roll out, the majority will certainly use smart contracts.

To simplify the function of a smart contract, you can think of it as a small computer program that follows an If/Then structure. For example, if you allow me to gain access to my favorite song or TV show, then I will transfer the funds into your account. They automatically trigger a transfer of information that can reduce human error and make routine processes simpler.

Transactions can be worth pennies, when it comes to a piece of music or the payment for consumer data, or they can run in the millions of dollars. The security is the same. No billing is needed as everything is recorded and the payment happens instantly, removing the worry and delay that happens with bank transfers. Smart contracts can also verify that adequate funding is available before allowing the transaction to occur.

Smart contracts could be one of the most important factors to come out of cryptocurrency, as they could disrupt the entire way we engage in commerce. Companies could launch their own cryptos and engage consumers in their products and ecosystem, in a world in which fiat currencies can no longer compete.

But will that happen anytime soon?

Volatility of Cryptocurrencies Remains an Issue

When arranging payment in cryptocurrencies, one continued problem is how to price a transaction when its value is fluctuating so dramatically every day. This is still an issue with cryptocurrency and not something anyone has an immediate solution for.

For now, one way around this as payments through smart contracts become more widespread, is to use stable value cryptocurrencies, like Tether, LiteCoin or Monero, rather than volatile ones like Ether and Bitcoin.

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Christina is a technology and business communicator who has worked with high profile ICOs and blockchain influencers to break industry news.

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These Entrepreneurs Are Building the Blank Canvas of the New Internet 5 3433

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

We need a new internet. This HTTP stuff is left over from the ‘90s. It’s corporate controlled in the post neutrality world, susceptible to government censorship, inaccessible to many with nearly half the world’s population still unable to connect. It increasingly needs a more streamlined makeover.

Or at least a little house cleaning. How many apps can we possibly have? How many passwords and accounts? How much content can we cram in here? What do we do with the ever growing graveyard of dead links, old MySpace accounts and cat memes, to say nothing of the emptying, generic cruise ship we call Facebook drifting steadily away from relevance? One possible answer: clean the slate. Start again. This time with something more efficient.

Imagining the Internet 2.0

By some indicators, blockchain could be the thing to supplant the internet as the de facto way we create, communicate and store data. But how will we see it widely implemented without it first becoming more user friendly to the layperson? SMBs and entrepreneurs don’t necessarily have a background in programming, nor have the skills to set their business up on the blockchain. Learning to program or hiring a team of blockchain devs isn’t always within reach to the average SMB, to say nothing of individual artisans or small nonprofits.

By contrast, consider how easy it is to start up a website. You can do it in a few hours, thanks to software platforms that make it easy. You get your URL from GoDaddy, a visual template from WordPress or SquareSpace, who also might bundle in your ecommerce space if you haven’t set that up with Shopify already. It’s because of these SaaS and PaaS third parties that we can web.

If we want to go blockchain, we’ll need a third parties like these to help facilitate it. So where are these platforms? Who’s building them?

The Deregulated Ecommerce Toolkit

Well, Eric Tippetts, for one. Tippetts expects the 2020s to see a shift to blockchain much like the 90s shift to the information superhighway and the 2010s shift to mobile. To speed things along, his company NASGO has created a toolkit called BlockBox, the goal of which is to be the ‘GoDaddy of blockchain’ so people and businesses can start building.

Through BlockBox, which Tippetts cocreated with a development team, you can find and secure a blockchain domain address, like you would with a URL, adapt your existing website for blockchain, and create a custom token. Instead of having to wrap your head around lines of code or hire a dev team, it just takes a couple minutes and a couple hundred bucks.

Tippetts describes NASGO itself as “a decentralized hosting environment that allows content to be seen in every part of the world, opening up blocked boundaries for communication and collaboration.” It also includes a platform for decentralized apps (DAPPS) that could compete with Apple and Google’s app stores.

Their website repeatedly emphasizes the deregulated nature of the product, ostensibly gearing their platform toward the “businesses, developers and consumers” of a sharing and open ecommerce.

A Platform for Public and Private Good

Amber Baldet’s company Clovyr has similar goals, but with a distinctly different tone. She wants people to use their DAPP platform to “build the systems we want to see in the world.”

Baldet left JP Morgan Chase, where she was hired to spearhead their out-of-character blockchain experiments, to found her startup. She recently testified before congress about blockchain regulation and the importance of protecting human rights and privacy early on, while the technology is still in its infancy.

She says that there needn’t be a divide between public and private interests when it comes to blockchain. “It’s very divided, the people that are building things for public chain and people that are building things for ‘permissioned’ or business enterprise kind of chains,” said Baldet in an interview with Fortune. She says that nomenclature isn’t helpful, “because it creates this kind of animosity where we’re saying that big business is on one side and the people or the proletariat are on the other side, when really it should just be about information residing where it makes sense and creating security boundaries that are logical.”

Building a Blank Canvas

In a way, the blockchain is a platform much like the internet itself, a canvas available for anybody to use, whatever their interests and intentions are.

So whatever direction the blockchain internet-nouveau of the future takes, if that’s really what we’re in for, people like Tippetts and Baldet are the architects of its structure. It’ll be up to the rest of to fill it up with content. Hopefully good content. Bring the memes, leave the corporate derelicts.

VEZT Wants You to be Able to Own Shares of Your Favorite Songs 6 9212

Mr. Cheeks has been producing music since the early 90s, under the mentorship of his late uncle, the legendary Gil Scott-Heron. He started with the Lost Boyz, won a Grammy for his work with Stephen Marley, and has released a handful of solo albums since.

Now, royalties for his singles will be available to his fans, thanks to the blockchain. Mr. Cheeks’ songs will be available on a platform that allows fans and investors to claim a slice of the rights to pop music they believe in. When the song is licensed for use, in advertising or film for example, you, the investor, get a cut.

It’s made possible through an app called VEZT, which is positioning itself to revolutionize the way music relates to money as the world’s “first music rights marketplace.” VEZT partnered with a long time Mr. Cheeks producer, Bink, to offer shares of the song “Lights, Camera, Action” which is currently available on the company’s website.

The Problem of Selling Music

Mixing music and markets is an old problem. How should musicians get paid? Who pays them? What about their support teams? How do we keep track of the flow of money and make sure everyone’s fairly compensated? Among the music world’s financial obstacles, one of the biggest issues is navigating licensing and royalties.

In Austin, for example, one of America’s most proficient music hubs, almost a third of musicians make less than minimum wage, and 70 percent are earning less than $10k per year on their work. That’s below the poverty line even for a household of one. It’s been like pulling teeth trying to get royalties from companies like Spotify, who generate income off their songs. Meanwhile even more expensive lawsuits pile up, or go completely unpursued from lack of funds, as marketers continue to ape good music with copyright infringing fakes. It’s a constant headache for musicians, producers and labels, and it makes it prohibitive to eke out a living in the music world.

Under VEZT’s model, royalties are simple. Music is intellectual property owned by the artist. The artist can sell a portion of those rights to fans, who become investors when they purchase a percentage of shares. Fans and musicians make an agreement to co-own the songs they both care so much about. If you love a song and want to see it do well, you invest. If it does well, you have a share in the artist’s success. Royalties are split based on percentage of ownership.

The concept comes from cofounders Robert Menendez, a former Wall St. financial trader/analyst, and Steve Stewart, an industry regular with entrepreneurial tendencies, whose accomplishments include ushering Stone Temple Pilots to fame in the early ‘90s and managing the band for a decade. They say they founded VEZT as part of a vision to “detangle a lot of the financial problems in the music industry, and connect fans more directly with the music they love.”

And now, they’ve expanded across the Pacific from VEZT’s headquarters in Los Angeles, and opened an office in South Korea.

‘The Perfect Environment’

“The fans of music in Korea are quite possibly the most enthusiastic and active fans on the planet,” says Stewart. “Combine this with a robust tech community and a government leading the way in adopting blockchain technologies and you have a perfect environment for VEZT.”

The ROK’s new legislation legitimizing crypto exchange, Dapps, and blockchain systems will take the peninsula farther into a brave new technological world, where many others have so far feared to tread. Combined with their now-world-famous maximalist pop industry, and it’s not hard to see why VEZT moved in.

Construction recently finished on their new 2500 square foot office in the Gangnam district of Seoul. VEZT has enlisted a host of professionals to their C-Suite, including veterans of major Korean record labels, Kpop producers, marketing and PR executives and, of course, tech experts.

Fixing Music With Blockchain

If their model works in Seoul and LA, VEZT could bring a more harmonious rhythm to an industry still trying to find its groove in the digital age. The world needs music, and musicians need to get paid. As with anything blockchain, cutting out some of the middlemen could be the Occam’s razor with the solution. When fans are directly invested in their music, everyone will want to see it succeed.

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