Comparison of Smart Contract Platforms

24,230 reads

Ivy-lang, Plutus, Solidity, Scrypto, Michelson, Hoon, Rust, …

You serious??

When should I find the time to explore all these languages? Most of them are barely used, making it incredibly hard to adopt them. Solidity is leading the pack, although, it’s not an easy language to get started with. This article will criticize and give new insights in the following platforms: Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, NEM, Stellar, iOlite, Neblio, and Lisk.

To give you an overview of all different existing smart contract platforms:

Finding The Right Smart Contract Platform

I will feature some existing smart contract platforms and some upcoming ones. I’ve selected these based on maturity, flexibility and the innovation they add to our ecosystem.

Ethereum — Old but Gold

Ethereum is always a safe bet. Ethereum is a gold standard in the world of smart contracts and has the biggest capitalization among other platforms. The majority of token sales happen on the Ethereum platform, using the ERC-20 token standard.

However, this standard has some serious bugs which have already led to major losses in the industry. Let me explain this.

ERC-20 assumes two ways of performing a token transaction:

1. transfer(): Send tokens to someone’s address.

2. approve() + transferFrom(): Deposit tokens to a smart contract.

But what if you use transfer() to send tokens to a smart contract by accident? The transaction will succeed but this transaction will not be recognized by the recipient contract.

“For example, if you send tokens to a decentralized exchange contract, then the exchange contract will receive your tokens but it will not credit these tokens to your exchange token balance. Moreover, if the decentralized exchange contract does not implement an emergency token extraction function, then it’s impossible to get your tokens back in any case, resulting in a permanent loss of the tokens. Due to this bug, the Ethereum ecosystem has lost millions of dollars already.”

My all-time favorite GIF — Source.

This information is provided by Reddit user u/Dexaran (source article), creator of the ERC223 standard. Dexaran is the first developer who has notified the Ethereum community about the aforementioned bug. In response to this, he has created the ERC223 standard.

Most developers are not aware of this ERC223 and ERC77 standard. To give a short comparison of both standards:

ERC223: This improved standard resolves the ERC20 critical bug by making the transfer() function throw an error on invalid transfers and canceling the transaction so no funds are lost. → Focussed on security .

. ERC777: Solves ERC20’s problems, such as lack of transaction handling mechanisms. → Focussed on mainstream adoption.

As you can see, the community still has to grow in terms of adopting more secure/better token standards.

NEM

Scalability is the most critical thing about NEM’s decentralized application. While ETH does a maximum of 15 transactions per second, NEM reportedly manages hundreds of transactions per second. The NEM foundation has given security and availability a priority so entrepreneurs deal with other problems and not technical difficulties.

While NEM is reportedly the faster, safer and easier technology, Ethereum provides a broader base for the creation of custom DApps. The main difference is that ETH applies its Smart Contracts on the Blockchain, while NEM uses code off the blockchain. Although this might arguably make it less decentralized, the method does have its benefits, such as better security, easier updates, faster execution times and lighter code.

Reddit user Nemario told me that the contract code can be updated at any time, all without any interaction with the chain. It is not possible to execute reverse transactions. This makes NEM less decentralized in one way, but on-chain security features like multi-sig and smart assets mitigate this ‘problem’.

NEM has customized data management apps called smart assets through which you can create tokens, data records, voting systems and other coins with just a few clicks. Where Ethereum is targeting companies intend to rebuild internal networks in the next 5 to 10 years, NEM is targeting companies looking for a fast, secure, and ready to use and handle solution that’s current. It will be interesting to see which companies adopt NEM over Ethereum. Source: www.cashtechnews.com

NEM provides several SDKs, below you can find a NodeJS snippet of a transfer transaction.

Hyperledger Fabric

Hyperledger Fabric (HLF) likes to call its smart contracts ‘chaincode’. HLF is an enterprise permissioned blockchain, built with great flexibility, which makes it very useful for businesses as their business rules change after approximately 7 years. Most other blockchains are not built considering flexibility.

Hyperledger Fabric itself was written on Go language, so its smart contracts support this language as well. Benefits? Golang is a very efficient language with a fast compile time.

In my opinion, writing chaincode is simple. The three most important functions are:

PutState: Create new asset or update existing one.

GetState: Retrieve asset.

GetHistoryForKey : Retrieve history of changes.

DelState: ‘Delete’ asset.

Note on DelState: HLF uses a state database that stores keys and their values. This is different from the sequence of blocks that make up the blockchain. A key and its associated value can be removed from the state database using the DelState function. However, this does not mean that there is an alteration of blocks on the blockchain.

The removal of a key and value would be stored as a transaction on the blockchain just as the prior addition and any modifications were stored as transactions on the blockchain.

The history of a key can be retrieved after the key is deleted. There is a GetHistoryForKey() function that retrieves the history and part of its response is an IsDeleted flag that indicates if the key was deleted. It would be possible to create a key, delete the key, and then create the key again; the GetHistoryForKey() function would track such a case.

Example chaincode:

Stellar Smart Contracts

Stellar smart contracts (SSC) are much different from Ethereum smart contracts. They are not Turing complete and are implemented as an agreement between multiple parties and enforced by transactions. Below you see a comparison between Stellar and Ethereum. Notice the huge difference in cost and confirmation time. A single transaction on the Stellar network costs only ~$0.0000002!

SSCs can be written in any language the Stellar community provides an API for (JavaScript, Python, Golang, PHP, …). You can find an example of a smart contract in PHP here.

An SSC is expressed as compositions of transactions that are connected and executed using various constraints. The following are examples of constraints that can be considered and implemented when creating SSCs (from Stellar documentation):

Multisignature — What keys are needed to authorize a certain operation? What parties need to agree on a circumstance in order to execute the steps?

Multisignature is the concept requiring signatures of multiple parties to sign transactions stemming from an account. Through signature weights and thresholds, representation of power in signatures is created.

Batching/Atomicity — What operations must all occur together or fail? What must happen in order to force this to fail or pass?

Batching is the concept of including multiple operations in one transaction. Atomicity is the guarantee that given a series of operations, upon submission to the network if one operation fails, all operations in the transaction fails.

Sequence — In what order should a series of transactions be processed? What are the limitations and dependencies?

The concept of sequence is represented on the Stellar Network through sequence number. Utilizing sequence numbers in transaction manipulation, it can be guaranteed that specific transactions do not succeed if an alternative transaction is submitted.

Time Bounds — When can a transaction be processed?

Time bounds are limitations on the time period over which a transaction is valid. Using time bounds enables time periods to be represented in an SSC.

Platforms Under Construction

We cannot forget about platforms which are developing promising smart contract products. Let’s take a look at our future options.

iOlite — Create Smart Contracts With Natural Language

iOlite is a product which focuses on the mass adoption of smart contract technology by providing an easy to use engine which is capable of understanding natural language to be compiled to smart contract code. iOlite is the ideal solution if you don’t want to spend time learning, instead just start creating smart contracts.

iOlite is based on the research done at Stanford University. They invented the FAE (Fast Adaptation Engine), which is capable of converting natural language or any other desired programming language into smart contract code. The FAE is not just straightaway translating your input to code. The FAE depends on contributors (smart contract experts) that are able to define structures containing language expressions. Furthermore, these structures are tied to smart contract code they write. This allows the engine to browse the structures to find the right expression so it can compile the desired smart contract. Whenever a structure is used, a contributor gets iOlite tokens rewarded.

As you can see, iOlite relies on their community to make the FAE successful. The FAE helps them by applying Machine Learning techniques to help it learn and adopt new structures more easily.

iOlite Labs is currently focusing on Ethereum smart contracts with Solidity as there is a massive need.

Travis Byrne from the iOlite team explained which languages can be used to create smart contracts. “What this means is that not only can programmers (in formal languages such as Python, C, JavaScript, etc.) immediately use their existing skills to write smart contracts, but also average people with no programming knowledge whatsoever, can just as easily start developing with natural languages like English. iOlite is dissolving the existing technical learning boundaries for creating smart contracts.”

Neblio — Blockchain for Business

Neblio is targeting the integration of blockchain into pre-existing enterprises via easy to use APIs in eight of the most commonly used programming languages. The key goal of Neblio is to provide an easy to use blockchain for existing businesses. Developers should be able to use Neblio blockchain technology without being a blockchain expert.

Neblio provides a Raspberry Pi wallet to stake your coins. The wallet itself can be set up with just one command after downloading the source code. By staking coins and running the node, you help to secure the wallet via a proof of work consensus algorithm and in return, you get a 10% increase on the amount of staked coins.

There is no obligation to run your Raspberry Pi day and night. Neblio allows you to have in total 7 days of downtime. Your coins will still gain weight during this time whilst your Raspberry Pi is off, however you won’t be able to discover blocks (and therefore receive staking rewards). The wallet itself consumes very little energy which makes it a great incentive for holding your Neblio coins in order to have a more stable coin price. Source: Reddit.

Probably you will ask yourself: How can your Raspberry Pi stay update to date as you can switch it off for so long? If you do this with an Ethereum node, you would have to sync for hours downloading the new data.

This is why Neblio has come up with this cool featured called QuickSync which is capable of synchronizing your node in less than a minute. But how? A fresh copy of the Neblio blockchain is now uploaded every night at midnight to Github. The Raspberry Pi will by default download the blockchain data from Github on their first install or when you have switched off your node for a couple of days, extract it to your Neblio data directory, and then sync up the remaining few hours. This should result in near-instant syncing. Source: Reddit.

What about Quick Sync security? The wallet will still verify all transactions. If there are any erroneous transactions, it won’t sync up to the newest block. So, downloading the blockchain via Quick Sync is just as secure.

Lisk — Sidechains

Lisk is not in the smart contract business. Lisk intends to allow interfacing with smart contract systems, such as Ethereum, through virtual machine integration. Let me make this clear. Lisk is not a smart contract system, it is a custom blockchain system. Lisk has built their business model around creating a simplified user experience and platform to easily implement custom generated blockchains for anyone from the individual, to the small business, to large banks.

Lisk runs every single application on a completely separate, isolated sidechain, responsible for itself. If a sidechain fails, the blame and responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the developer running the sidechain.

Another great benefit of Lisk is its consensus algorithm. They use ‘Delegate Proof of Stake’, which is faster, more secure and consumes way less energy than Proof of Stake. You can learn more about it here.

This final point is a contentious one and may be a matter of personal preference. Lisk is attempting to tap into the several hundred thousand strong JavaScript developer community by building their entire ecosystem in JavaScript. This makes it very easy for traditional web application developers to build out and interface with Lisk custom blockchains. There is zero need for them to learn a new language and JavaScript has been thoroughly tested and its issues well documented (JavaScript is far from perfect).

Source: 3 ways Lisk isn’t Ethereum and why it’s a good thing — Mattewdc

Conclusion

It’s hard to compare all platforms as it just depends on your needs. It’s best to look at the maturity of each platform as that’s a good indicator: SDK, build tools, proper documentation? iOlite is as well a good choice when you want to prototype smart contracts very fast. In my opinion, Stellar is a strong upcoming opponent in terms of low costs and a fast blockchain confirmation time.

Featured Image

Tags