What is a smart contract?
Smart contracts are programs that run in the blockchain.
In the case of ehtereum, smart contracts are written in Ethereum’s native language, Solidity.
Like any computer program, smart contracts can store information and carry out tasks following a set of logical rules. The most relevant type of smart contract that you should be familiar with is the ERC20 contract.
ERC20 contracts share a common set of functionality and are the de facto standard for token contracts in the Ethereum blockchain. ERC20 token contracts contain functions to query the token balance in an address or to transfer tokens to a different address, among other tasks.
You may have noticed that the functionality of ERC20 contracts resembles some of the things you can do with the native token, ETH, e.g. storing and transferring them from one address to another.
This is precisely the purpose of the ERC20 standard. Once again, one of the main features that made Ethereum what it is today is that anyone can create an ERC20 contract.
This makes it possible for anyone that learns Solidity to write and deploy a token that can be bought and sold like the Ethereum native token, ETH, without having to run and maintain their own blockchain.
Famous cryptocurrencies like Tether (USDT), Dai (DAI), Chainlink (LINK), or Bao Finance (BAO) are among the hundreds of thousands of ERC20 tokens that run in the Ethereum blockchain at the time of this writing.
The state of the Ethereum blockchain is shared and maintained by thousands of unique live nodes that have delivered a robust 100% uptime of the network since its inception in 2015.
This broad distribution of nodes makes it practically impossible for an individual or small group of actors to unilaterally exert control over the platform’s functions or development.
Well distributed blockchains like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Digibyte (DGB), among many others, are said to be ‘decentralized’.
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