Blockchain Basics

In Dr. Strangelove, a party created a “doomsday machine” that would automatically destroy all life if the machine detected a nuclear attack on that party. There was no override, and, well, let’s just say that the film is hilarious but probably not a comedy in a conventional sense. There, if the “network” received certain information, the device would activate. Like a smart contract on a blockchain, the problem in Dr. Strangelove was that the party that created the doomsday machine activated it before telling its adversary (i.e., the other network participant). That “smart contract” was critically not smart. Blockchain smart contracts (with much smaller but still meaningful stakes) are computer code designed to adjust automatically the rights and obligations of network participants based upon the inputting of information to the network, with such information visible to all and inputted per means and procedures agreed upon by all before the contracts become effective. And thus paper-intensive, multi-step and multi-party transactions, like securities sales, supply chain coordination, and supply chain finance, might proceed with greater ease and security. Costs could be lowered, transactional speed quickened, and litigation simplified or evaded entirely. This webinar examines these areas of promise.

Webinars in this Series: