Back 2 Basics: The original idea of Smart Contracts

While everyone is discussing whether Ethereum or EOS will win the market, it's a good time to rehash the basics and remember what these protocols are all about. As these are both protocols designed for Smart Contract application, this initial article by Nick Szabo which initially introduced the Smart Contract concept describes the direction, vision and basic idea. Thus, it remains one of my favorite classics. 

Nick Szabo: Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets*

Quick definition: “Smart contract is the latest type of contacts with the terms of an agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. The code and the agreement contained therein exist across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network”

• Nick Szabo is an American computer scientist and the inventor of one of the first virtual currencies: “Bit Gold” (1998)

*This is a partial rewrite of Nicks article in 1996