NXT team has announced the launch of the full suite of Smart Transaction templates. Meant to serve as building blocks for businesses to construct Blockchain solutions for particular problems, they represent a less risky alternative to Ethereum’s Turing-complete smart contracts.

The development of NXT’s Smart Transactions began 3 years ago, as the need to provide an easy way to implement scalable Blockchain solutions in unrelated businesses has been recognized. The team set out with the goal of delivering a working framework, which would be secure, easy to code and lightweight.

In order to fulfill that goal, they have created and rigorously tested a suite of Smart Transaction templates, which can be used on their own, or in various combinations, to build the necessary applications for businesses, governments, lawyers, organizations, and so on.

Low risk, low cost Blockchain-as-a-Service

The main idea behind NXT’s Smart Transaction templates is to provide a low-risk, low-cost opportunity to implement Blockchain smart contracts, leaving little room for human error, compared, for example, to Ethereum’s freeform smart contracts.

Here’s how Mitchell Loureiro, NXT’s Marketing Strategist, compared the two:

“The templates are designed to work like Lego, essentially, while Ethereum is like clay. With Ethereum, every piece needs to be built from scratch, then molded. Any imperfections cause damage later. With NXT, the lego pieces are already tested and secure. You need only assemble them in the right combination to achieve whatever goal you have. The right combination of Smart Transactions, as we call them, can accomplish a variety of goals.”

Now, 3 years after the development of Smart Transactions began, they are fleshed out, well-tested, and, according to the developers, able to cover almost all needs a business can have.

If you are interested in learning more about NXT’s Smart Transaction templates, you can use the following links:

Ardor tokens distribution

The concept of Smart Transactions is closely tied to Ardor, a “child chain” platform in development by NXT’s team, which was announced late last month. A Blockchain-as-a-Service platform, Ardor’s mission is to allow anyone to set up their own child chains, connected to NXT’s main Blockchain for security purposes.

The platform is due to be released in 2017, and it will be fully compatible with the Smart Transaction templates.

Ardor tokens, the cryptocurrency which will power the Ardor ecosystem, are planned to be released earlier than the system itself on October 12, 2016. They will be distributed to every holder of NXT, the amount received being an average of hourly snapshots of the owners’ balances.

Three major exchanges so far have agreed to take internal snapshots of their customers’ balances for the purpose of future distribution of Ardor tokens: Poloniex, BTC38, and Bittrex. The snapshotting process takes place from July 14, all the way to October 12, when it will end on the millionth block of NXT’s Blockchain.

Bas Wisselink, Director of NXT Foundation, claims that this is the perfect time for people outside of the crypto industry to become engaged in the Blockchain technology, as the exchanges allow for fiat-to-NXT, and, by extension, to-Ardor trading: