The Future of Business Transactions: How Smart Contracts are Changing the Game

In a fast paced and increasingly digital world, it is no surprise that even the nature of business transactions is evolving too. Whether your company is in the B2B, B2C or C2C space, smart contract technology has the potential to change the game and revolutionize the way we interact with other businesses and consumers alike.

My last article called “Using AI/NLP to enhance your product's user experience” covered how artificial intelligence and its subdomain of natural language processing can be used to create an enriched user experience. This new delivery will carry on exploring the technological frontier and focus on a specific way Blockchain/Smart Contracts technology can be used to bring value to a new or existing business flow in need of enhanced security, automation, and traceability of data across its lifecycle. We will even discuss how to use NLP to generate new Smart Contract templates.

?

What is a Smart Contract?

Smart Contracts are pieces of logic that contain agreed terms of a specific transaction, usually between 2 participants (but many permutations are possible) and carry actions that are self-executing upon meeting all listed terms. The code and information that comprises each contract is stored on a blockchain, which makes them tamper-proof, immutable, and transparent to all involved parties.

There is a tendency to associate the concept of Smart Contracts with cryptocurrencies, and for the most part that is correct. The majority of the Smart Contract languages are written having a specific public blockchain/crypto platform as target, which hinders interoperability and limits their adoption for non-crypto/non-financial transactions or those requiring private handling of sensitive information.

?

Enter DAML

DAML is a Smart Contract language that has been written to be blockchain-agnostic, making it a versatile solution for businesses that want to incorporate smart contracts into their operations. Due to its intrinsic interoperability, it opens the door to use Smart Contracts in a private blockchain environment, allowing only authorized parties to have access to specific information.

Despite being fully capable of automating complex workflows, DAML is designed in a way it is easy to understand for both a developer and a business user, allowing companies to quickly create, test, and deploy smart contracts in a fast and efficient manner. Let’s look at the code of a simple Smart Contract written in DAML to exemplify the above:

The example defines a Smart Contract for a Payment Agreement between 2 parties: the Payer and the Payee, along with an Amount to be paid. It also defines which actions can be taken by each party:

1. Confirm (Payer): a new payment agreement is created with the specified payment amount updated
2. Cancel (Payee): the Smart Contract is archived

Intersection with Generative AI

Just as easy as we automated this scenario, Generative AI and its latest chatbot incarnations can be leveraged to create new Smart Contract templates based on simple human language. The above example was generated using ChatGPT.

In an enterprise scenario, prompt engineering paired with API access to a large language model can then be used to provide a dynamic workflow capable of creating new templates or coping and modifying existing ones for full automation power in the hands of non-developers.

Use cases

Lets think about other, more complex potential uses of this technology:

• Supply Chain Management: from ordering raw materials to shipping finishing goods.
• Education: implementing an immutable grade tracking system that follows the students as they progress through the different stages of education.
• Retail/Rewards/Gifting: a rewards or digital token system that allows end to end traceability of tokens gained and spent across a group of participating businesses that emit or redeem such tokens.

This is not an inclusive list, as the applicability of this technology is wide, crossing the boundaries of many industries through a plethora of different use cases.

Real-life examples

Here are a few real-life examples of companies using DAML for their smart contract solutions:

高盛 has developed its end-to-end digital asset platform using DAML at the core. From Mathew McDermott , Managing Director & Global Head of Digital Assets:

"Our goal from the outset has been to help our clients realize the benefits of end-to-end digital lifecycle processing across tokenized assets, digital currencies, and other financial instruments. We are pleased to bring this Daml-based solution to market and continue to find efficiencies that will improve the velocity of transactions."

An InsureTech company called Zinnia is taking advantage of the benefits of DAML in their leading product Zahara. From Michele Trogni , CEO at Zinnia:

"The Zinnia system of record is built using Daml thanks to our partnership with?Digital Asset. Daml allows us to securely share real-time data updates across the insurance value chain."

Several heavy-weight consulting firms around the globe have created specialized practices in DAML to help their customers deliver cutting-edge Smart Contract solutions. Such is the case of GFT Technologies , having delivered more than 10 different DAML projects in partnership with Digital Asset.

Conclusion

Wrapping up, weather your company is going through a digital transformation process or you are trying to solve a data traceability/mutability issue for your industry, chances are you might find the solution in automating your business transactions through Smart Contracts. DAML specifically, can help you achieve that in the context of a privacy-first blockchain solution.