In the cryptocurrency sector, smart contracts have been around for a while now, with the most recent implementation being on Cardano last month.
Smart contracts have become even more significant to the entire sector as a result of the advent of decentralized finance (DeFi).
The reason for this is that they are necessary to develop the protocols that will be used to run these decentralized applications (DApps). The use of smart contracts has risen in prominence as a result of the success that platforms such as Ethereum and Solana are having with it.
In order to add smart contracts to its network, Cardano has been working for some time, and on September 12th, the Alonzo Hard Fork Combinator was officially launched, bringing the dream closer to reality (HFC).
The debut of smart contracts functionality on the network was widely heralded by many in the business who were anticipating it. However, Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, believes that the phrase does not accurately describe what the company accomplishes in practice.
An online commenter pointed out that what Cardano accomplishes is actually much different from what is meant by the phrase “smart contracts,” which sparked the debate. Using the handle @ KtorZ_, a user pointed out that the network differs from what other smart contracts platforms do, describing the network as “atypical.”
Compared to most existing smart-contract platforms, Cardano takes a much different road. Recently, we’ve seen a lot of discussions going on about “concurrency issues” and “EUTXO vs accounts”. While equally expressive, Cardano programmability is different and atypical.
— KtorZ (@_KtorZ_) September 18, 2021Smart Contracts are not available in Cardano
Hoskinson responded with a tweet in which he agreed with the user, stating that the term “smart contracts” does not adequately describe what the platform is capable of. Instead, they came to the conclusion that a new phrase was required to characterize the network’s capabilities in place of smart contracts.
It was decided by the originator that this new term would be called programmable validators. I agree with the guy who brought this to my attention that this phrase better characterizes Cardano’s programmability than the others.
Matthias gets it absolutely right. Programmable validators instead of smart contracts https://t.co/8VVESJ8MYU
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) September 19, 2021Further explaining, the user pointed out that, in contrast to other platforms such as Ethereum and Solana, it was not possible to simply install a smart contract on Cardano.
According to the user, validators are implicitly referred to by hashes prior to their use, and they are disclosed when the validators are activated. This means that the validators do not generate any output on the network as a whole. Nothing more than “just validate” is done by them.
In conclusion, KtorZ stated that the term “smart contracts” appeared to be an imprecise description of what he was talking about. Rather than using vague terminology, I prefer more concrete terms such as ‘on-chain validators’ and ‘off-chain code.’ “If anything, the term ‘smart-validators’ already sounds significantly better to me,” they continued.
