Breaking Down Dragonchain Smart Contracts

Dragonchain is pulling back the curtain on one of the most interesting and exciting new parts of its comprehensive enterprise platform, Currency and Interchain Smart Contracts. An integral feature of the Dragonchain Commercial Platform, these customizable blockchain smart contracts create a whole new automated framework for the incentivization of behavior at the organizational level.

One of the most interesting — and least understood outside technical circles — aspects of the new blockchain paradigm is the smart contract. If the distributed ledger concept gives blockchain its trustless network transparency, it is the smart contract that expands the network’s utility into new and diverse areas.

What is a Blockchain Smart Contract?

In basic terms, the blockchain smart contract is a set of self-executing sequential conditions linked to outcome-based actions. Not unlike the way a vending machine or a coin-operated washing machine repeats the sequence of receiving money, then executing a sequence of programmed actions; a smart contract performs a set of commands based on certain actions, but then records these transactions unalterably via blockchain nodes. The applications for this are wide-ranging since they can apply to virtually any set of if/then situations, from industry-specific supply chains to buying a house to voting.

Introducing Custom Token and Interchain Smart Contracts

Dragonchain’s library of smart contract templates extends this utility further. By offering customizable turnkey solutions, enterprises can easily design smart contracts particular to their own business needs, which may include both private internal and public blockchain interactions. The five separate layers of blockchain agnostic network consensus mean more flexibility and scalability in how smart contracts can be used.

Using the Currency Smart Contract, organizations can specify a total amount of currency that can be retrieved, transfer currency between wallet addresses, or check the balance of the currency in a wallet address. These can all be run by different schemas (e.g., ERC20 or ERC223).

As for the Interchain Smart Contract, it can watch a blockchain of the user’s choice (e.g., Ethereum or Neo) for incoming transactions or fire smart contracts on Dragonchain or another public blockchain. The Interchain would then move tokens or currency on other chains and use a public chain for transparent processing of selective parts of your business logic.

How might this be used?

Rewards or loyalty programs are an easy example to reference. A persistent downside of loyalty programs to organizations is unused incentives. Those loyalty points that just never get used. Unrealized incentives present specific accounting challenges, and might end up costing an organization more than the benefit they offer.

Dragonchain smart contracts solve this problem by allowing that redemption to be automated — eliminating the possibility of unused points. Let’s assume a grocery store uses smart contracts — perhaps that store also has a Dragonchain smart contract loyalty card for its customers. When customers reach a certain threshold, rewards can automatically be triggered — perhaps a free reusable grocery bag is mailed. Alternately, that grocery store might query its base of loyalty card smart contract holders, inviting those with the highest balances to a valued customer event.

The possibilities are as limitless as the imagination. It’s just another example of what we like to call Blockchain Business Magic.