Smart contracts have become incredibly popular over the past year or two. While most people associate these with Ethereum, other platforms and currencies utilize similar technology. One individual recently used BitBay’s trustless smart contracts to sell a few acres of land. It was a very risky venture, but things turned out just fine.
Smart Contracts Remain a Risky Endeavor
Any project or currency claiming to have “trustless” smart contracts will be scrutinized sooner or later. Most of them have no solid evidence to back up such claims in the first place. In the case of BitBay, that situation has come to change. One person recently decided to use its smart contract technology to sell five acres of land. A lot of money was involved in the transaction, which meant the technology had to hold up or a financial hangover would be the end result. Thankfully, it seems things turned out OK.
There are plenty of reasons as to why people wouldn’t trust smart contracts for such a purpose. First of all, we have seen multiple projects fail due to errors in their contracts. Secondly, there is no trustless solution to speak of right now. A lot of transactions linked to smart contracts go as planned, but there is always that fear of something going amiss. BitBay seems to have cracked the code in this regard, although other people’s mileage may vary when it comes to its “trustless” smart contracts.
Similar to Ethereum, BitBay is a cryptocurrency with smart contract technology. It also provides a decentralized marketplace which lets anyone in the world sell anything and everything with relative ease and full anonymity. This project has been around for quite some time now, yet it seems to fly under most people’s radars. The creation of smart contracts occurs through BitBay’s user interface, which makes it somewhat easy to set things up. It’s very similar to how most people create Ethereum contracts these days.
Although it only takes a few clicks to create said contracts – there is no coding involved – it’s not necessarily trustless by default. More specifically, the trustless aspect comes in the form of the decentralized marketplace where these smart contracts are visible. Both buyer and seller must deposit a fixed amount of money into an encrypted account. Anyone trying to cheat will cause both deposits to be destroyed. It is a double-deposit escrow system, which is pretty nifty in its own regard.
Even with this technology in place, it is still up to both parties to conduct due diligence. One should never trust strangers on the internet, for obvious reasons. In this particular case, the buyer was perfectly legitimate and made quick work of signing the paperwork associated with the property. The money then changed hands and both parties were happy.
This doesn’t mean everyone in the world should now be flocking to BitBay. However, it shows there are trustless features to be found in various cryptocurrencies. Always do thorough research, especially when looking to buy or sell very expensive items. Moreover, with a booming smart contract auditing industry, success stories like this one will eventually become far more common – that is, assuming there is another marketplace technology capable of supporting such contracts in the first place.
