Smart Contract
A smart contract is a program stored on a blockchain that executes deterministically when called — enforcing rules and moving assets without an intermediary, and without the possibility of post-deployment edits.
How they run
On Ethereum, contracts are compiled to EVM bytecode and called via the contract ABI — a 4-byte function selector plus encoded arguments. On Stellar, the Soroban platform runs WASM contracts designed for efficiency. Either way, execution is deterministic and replicated: every validating node runs the same code on the same inputs and must agree on the result.
Contracts pay for execution — gas on Ethereum, resource fees on Soroban — which prices computation in the network’s native units and discourages abuse.
The risk profile
Immutability cuts both ways: a deployed bug cannot be patched in place. Reentrancy, integer errors, access-control mistakes, and upgrade-path surprises have caused the industry’s largest losses — which is why audits, formal checks, and automated compliance scanning before deployment are standard practice for anything holding value.
Related Standards
- •Ethereum EVM specification / Solidity ABI
- •Stellar Soroban smart contracts platform
Free Tools & Resources
Further Reading
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