What is a Smart Contract? A Beginner’s Guide to the Technology Behind Blockchain

Catalyst
3 min readJan 18, 2023

“Smart Contract” — You’ve heard the term, but what is?

A smart contract is a self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement written directly into lines of code. It is a digital agreement that is stored and replicated on a blockchain network. Smart contracts are a key feature of blockchain technology and they enable a wide range of applications and use cases. In this beginner’s guide, we’ll explain what smart contracts are, how they work, and why they are important.

What is a Smart Contract?

A smart contract is a self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement written directly into lines of code. It is a digital agreement that is stored and replicated on a blockchain network. Smart contracts are designed to facilitate, verify, and enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract.

Smart contracts can be used for a wide range of applications, such as property transactions, supply chain management, and online marketplaces. They can also be used to create decentralized applications (dApps) that run on a blockchain network.

How do Smart Contracts work?

A smart contract is a set of instructions that are stored on a blockchain. When a certain condition is met, such as…

--

--