What Are Smart Contracts? And How Will They Transform The Workplace?
How many times have your parents told you this: "If you drink milk before you sleep, tomorrow you get a bonus on your pocket money.”
Your parents used a concept known as “If this….then that” to incentivize you to do what they want. This is exactly how a smart contract works.
If
You drink milk.
Your parents see you drinking milk.
The following day you receive bonus pocket money.
If you don’t
Drink milk.
Your parents won't see you drinking milk.
The next morning you won’t receive any bonus.
A smart contract can do almost anything, provided you’re smart enough to code it based on the “if this…then that” concept. Let’s break that down more.
You can write a smart contract that states the following
Every time I give you 1 Dollar.
You will give me 1 Euro.
You can also add a more specific condition that automatically calculates the daily exchange rate between Euros and Dollars.
Further, you can set a limit for the conditions to apply. For instance, unless I give you 10 Dollars or more, the smart contract won’t be executed, and the money will be returned to me.
A smart contract is a piece of code deployed on the blockchain.
A smart contract is immutable:
Once deployed on the blockchain, it cannot be changed.
If you need to change the code, you must create a new smart contract and tell people to stop using the old one.
You need to exercise caution when deploying a smart contract to avoid having bugs deployed on the blockchain forever.
A smart contract is distributed:
A smart contract is deployed on a decentralized blockchain.
This means nobody controls it.
It is an agreement between multiple online parties that will be executed once certain conditions are met.
Since the code is distributed on every node (computer) that uses the blockchain, there is no way to control it.
Blockchain is open source – anybody can access the blockchain to see how you reacted with your smart contract.
Now that you understand what a smart contract is:
This is a powerful tool that can help revolutionize and change the workplace.
The primary purpose of smart contracts is to remove human errors and issues. By deploying smart contracts in the workplace, employees' work experience could drastically save time.
Let’s discuss some use cases:
1) Health Insurance company
A smart contract can facilitate health insurance by doing the following:
Selling minted NFTs on the blockchain as health insurance packages.
Investors could pool their money into the smart contract locking it on the protocol.
Any hospital that wants to participate would create a wallet and connect it to the protocol.
Patients’ health reports could be minted into NFTS and uploaded on the blockchain.
Oracles can feed smart contracts with the information required to determine reimbursement eligibility.
If a patient is eligible for reimbursement, the funds are transferred instantly in stablecoins to their wallets.
If no reimbursements occur, investors can take their locked funds in addition to profits after a certain period designated by the smart contract.
Key takeaways from this model:
Because the entire process is automated via smart contracts, this means:
Insurance companies don’t need to pay salaries to employees.
No overhead cost because there is no physical office.
This translates into a much lower subscription fee for an efficient service.
2) Real Estate
An alternative option to buy and sell real estate without third-party interference would be via smart contracts.
A decentralized website could be designed where users connect their wallets to sign in.
House owners can mint their houses’ ownership contracts as NFTs and upload them on the blockchain.
Oracles can be used to validate that house prices are not too low or too high so that fair competition is maintained.
Buyers can simply buy the house directly from the seller and pay instantly
House ownership delivers instantly and publicly on the blockchain to the new owner.
Web3 entrepreneurs could leverage this idea through the following:
Design a metaverse where people can roam the virtual world and view various real estate units.
Facilitate buying, selling and renting of real estate units for a small fee that covers gas fees.
Partial ownership of houses and real estate becomes available as it is easy to deploy a partition mechanism on the blockchain through the smart contract.
3) Crowd Funding.
Smart contracts can be leveraged to offer a community investment mechanism that supports startups and emerging ideas:
Community members can gain access by bidding on minted NFTs as entry tickets.
The winning bids enter the community’s treasury and are locked there.
Community members can propose projects and startups they think should be supported.
Community members vote through the smart contract, constructing a governance system and preparing a voting mechanism.
The smart contract automatically transfers the allocated funds to the designated wallet when a vote is passed successfully.
Everything is publicly displayed on the blockchain for increased transparency.
This option is ideal if a group of investors:
Want to invest without compromising their privacy or sharing private data.
Hold digital crypto assets and want to leverage them for investment purposes.
Want to allocate funds to advance the web3 revolution.
Want a method that eases cross-border investments while ensuring transparency.
Seeking more open and timeless markets.
Smart contracts are a revolutionary technology that can completely transform the workplace and governance system. Do you have an idea that can leverage smart contracts to solve a market problem? Feel free to share it with Qurios Labs.
We are a web3 venture studio and are always open to curios ventures in the space!
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