When scholars and technologists first began work on a theoretical ” smart contract ,” the idea seemed more like science fiction than reality. But in the decades since, that idea has come closer to becoming an achievement.
The term “smart contract” is popularly attributed to Nick Szabo, a computer scientist who worked on an early iteration of the distributed ledger technology enabling Bitcoin . Szabo first introduced the concept in the 1990s as an obscure academic computer science concept. Fast-forward to last December, when Szabo gave the keynote address at the Smart Contracts Symposium , the first event specifically dedicated to the design and development of the idea he pioneered over a decade earlier. The event, put together by the Chamber of Digital Commerce’s Smart Contracts Alliance and hosted by Microsoft’s Technology Center, brought together technologists, cryptographers, attorneys and financial services experts, and signaled a new level of seriousness in the idea.
