Smart contracts are different

Smart contracts are different

2023-03-29

The Council of the European Union supported the initiative according to which smart contracts should be able to be disabled and terminated. It is obvious that such a position of European legislators is connected with the prevailing trend of tightening regulation of everything related to cryptocurrencies. Smart contracts initially fell out of previous versions of European laws and now the Council of the European Union has decided to eliminate this gap.

Perhaps this position is related to ensuring the safety and protection of consumers. If smart contracts cannot be disabled or terminated, this may lead to undesirable consequences, such as unauthorized use or violation of data privacy. In addition, the ability to disable and terminate smart contracts can help prevent fraud and deception of consumers. However, this may also lead to restrictions on the use of smart contracts in some cases, which raises concerns in the crypto community.

Concern is caused by the inconsistency of the spirit of blockchain decentralization, which guarantees transparency and immutability of smart contracts and the ability to change the code even after the contract has already been deployed.

If such a version is adopted and becomes the standard for smart contracts, we will probably see a further "stratification" of the crypto business into centralized and decentralized sectors.

It should be noted that there is already a variety of smart contracts that can be changed, updated and modified - this is an Updatable smart contract. Traditional smart contracts are fixed and cannot be changed after they are deployed. This makes them safe and transparent, but it can also create problems if errors are found in them or an update is required.

Updated smart contracts usually consist of two or more components: the main contract and additional contract modules. The main contract usually contains the addresses of additional contracts and functions for updating them. If you need to change the functionality of a smart contract, developers can deploy a new contract module with updated code and change the link in the main contract pointing to the new module.

However, it is worth noting that smart contracts that are being updated may have security and centralization disadvantages, since they provide the ability to change the contract code after its deployment. This may cause concerns among users who rely on the immutability and transparency of blockchain technology.