Smart contract development is about to become top notch through a collaboration between two blockchain industry leaders, Blockstack and Algorand to develop the emergence of a next generation first of its kind programming language, CLARITY.
What Is Smart Contract?
Smart contract was initiated in 1994 by Nick Szabo, a cryptographer. The idea was to record contracts in the form of computer codes to eliminate the need of trusted third-party such as banks. The contracts are activated automatically after meeting setting conditions. Smart contracts are being used for ICOs, financial trades, financial services, insurance, credit authorization and legal processes. They make transactions trackable, immutable and irreversible. In a nutshell, smart contract eliminates middle men.
Limitations Of Smart Contract
The current state of smart contract has a couple of limitations. There is an inherent risk of confidential data of one party being accessible to all, due to lack of privacy. Insecurity, ineffectiveness and unreliability are other challenges being faced with current state of smart contract.
Solution Through Clarity
With increasing real-world use cases for smart contract, there is undeniable need for an upgrade. This upgrade by Blockstack and Algorand represents an important step toward smart contract development.
What is Clarity?
CLARITY is an alternative smart contract language that is purpose-built for the need of developers working on high stakes transactions in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Compared to present solutions, the need for smart contract languages that are more safe, secure, and predictable in order to mature its current state is being recognized in the development of Clarity.
Clarity is a decidable language, that is to say that it is possible to know how a contract will behave in certain situations without prior execution. This can be known with mathematical certainty. Developers can initiate and execute contracts between each other seamlessly through the use of a widely adopted, decidable, open-source language, with Clarity.
Also, Clarity is turing incomplete, it allows for complete static analysis of the entire call graph of a given smart contract, there is guarantee that static analysis of programs to determine properties like runtime cost and data usage can complete successfully.
According to Algorand founder Dr. Sivio Micali, the emergence of Clarity, a next generation programming language, has the potential to unlock blockchain-based solutions for large-scale enterprises and governments, which demand a higher level of trust and security.
Algorand and Blockstack jointly see Clarity as a way to work towards interchain communication, inviting others to join them on this open-source initiative to avoid walled gardens that traditionally require a third party intermediary.
Key Features Of Clarity
- PREDICTABILITY: – Developers are able to predict and know how their contracts will behave prior execution. Clarity language uses a clearly understood and very accurate syntax.
- SECURITY:- Users supply their own conditions for transactions, the clarity language ensures that that a contract may never unexpectedly transfer a token owned by a user.
- ABSENCE OF COMPILER:- Code developers are assured that what they wrote, analyzed, and tested is exactly what is being executed. All clarity contracts are broadcasted on the blockchain same way they are written by the developers.
How to Test Clarity
To test the clarity code, you need a NodeJS installed on your workstation. Version 8.12.0 is required to install and run the start project. Next is to download a starter project, run tests, interact with contracts, initialize a client, check syntax, deploy contract and then run public functions. Details and guide on the steps can be found on clarity tutorial available online. You can do some exploratory programming with the online Clarity REPL.
Other projects and developers are welcomed to put in effort and contribute towards the goal of helping the smart contract industry mature beyond its current state through Clarity, deigned by scientists from Princeton and MIT. Clarity open-source project is initially supported by Blockstack and Algorand. Visit clarity-lang.org or github to collaborate.
What is Algorand All About?
Algorand is a technology company that built and developed the world’s first open, permissionless, pure proof-of-stake blockchain protocol that without forking, provides the necessary security, scalability, and decentralization needed for today’s economy.
You can build a stable and trustable platform through Algorand. Algorand has since launch, rolled out technical innovation leading the defi movement. This includes the Algorand 2.0 which was initiated 6 months after Algorand launched their platform.
Algorand is popularly known for enabling enterprise to embrace decentralized finance, expanding methods for transaction and exchange of value, building new financial tools, processes and services, bringing new financial assets on chain, and innovating on the intersection of public and private solutions.
Algorand’s latest innovation is a commitment scheme- Pointproofs, a new commitment scheme that supports non-interactive aggregation of proofs across multiple commitments.
Algorand has numerous use cases which includes:
- Attestiv: Enabling digital media validation across the issurance ecosystem
- Verady: Professional-grade accounting integrated available to Algorand users
- Props: Migrating its rapidly growing user network to Algorand due to scalability
- Rhovit: Paving the way for content monetization and platform gamification on Algorand
- Meld Gold: Transforming gold into a digital asset on Algorand
- Republic: Building a first in class digital asset on Algorand
- Realio: Leveraging Algorand standard asset technology to launch RST token on Algorand’s blockchain.
- Tether: Leveraging Algorand 2.0’s ASA technology to launch first stablecoin on Algorand’s blockchain. etc. Visit algorand.com to learn more
What is Blockstack All About?
Blockstack is an open source software for a user owned internet that returns online data ownership to developers and consumers, it was founded in 2013 by Dr. Muneeb Ali and headquartered in New York City. Blockstack apps give users direct ownership of their internet assests and protect user privacy. Private data lockers and a universal login with blockchain-based security and encryption is used to protect your data from big internet companies.
Each year, Blockstack hosts over 100 global events with 10,000+ developers, scienties and entrepreneurs. There are over 420 apps built on blockstack and you can build your app on blockstack in less than an hour, with everything you need, from auth to data storage, ready in production. Visit blockstack.org to learn more.
