As many of us know, Ethereum is a platform used to create smart contracts. The interest in smart contracts is increasing everyday and thus the interest in Ethereum is increasing as well as it’s one of the most popular platforms for smart contracts in the crypto universe.
As known, Smart contracts has many useful advantages such as removing third parties from transactions and making sure that the terms of the transaction is not modified by either of the parties, however today we will not be discussing the usual consumer advantages. We will be looking at a smaller scale, such as smart devices.
Internet of Things
As the world progress into a digital world, most of the devices manufactured and used everyday are turning into digital devices which are connected to the internet such as our TVs, Phones, Watches and more.
Governments nowadays are looking into ways to create digital cities where humans will not have a big role in maintaining that entity, which means that these smart devices will have to be able to replace humans. Let’s say that you’ve bought a smart fridge that keeps track of the apples inside of it, once you run out of apples, the fridge should automatically orders it from the nearest store. Creating that order will be a process done between two smart devices automatically, smart contracts provide the best solution for transactions between those two entities as the smart contract will have an input of the amount of apples needed and the transaction will be initiated based on that.
The whole process is done automatically, without any user interaction. Smart contracts insure that the transaction is done correctly with proper agreement on both parties.
Smart Cities
Smart contracts do not only mean payments, they can also be used to make sure that the consumer gets exactly what they purchased.
For example, If a user bought a 10 gbps network connection to their home, Smart contracts can be used to monitor the speed that the user is getting, and if it drops below the number the user bought, a specific actions occurs. In this case either the user is refunded or the contract is automatically terminated.
In the digital cities era, devices will be connected to each other by smart contracts and all what they will have to do is create a transaction when an action happen. Having all devices using smart contracts means that not only one manufacturer will have to be used to create these devices as they won’t have to follow a specific protocol for communicating with each other. and it also gives a protection to both parties as it makes sure that both parties are getting what they need.
Issues currently facing Ethereum
Obviously we are still years away from a fully smart city based on smart contracts, as Ethereum takes around ~40 seconds for a transaction to confirm. That amount of seconds is not acceptable in real life, Ethereum will not be able to handle all the transaction going through it in the case of implementing a smart city based on it. however, Ethereum has a very good development team which means that these problems might be solved in the future.
Conclusion
The world is rapidly changing around us and evolving into a digital world, smart contracts will be one of the most important topics of the future years due to it’s importance and uses. Smart contracts will be used to shape the future of transactions and automated payments. As Etheruem is one of the most successful smart contract platforms, it might take a huge role in that transition.
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