CONFIDENTIAL SMART CONTRACTS: HOW IT WORKS AND WHY YOU SHOULD USE OASIS NETWORK

Helen Imah
5 min readSep 22, 2021

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Every day brings a fresh opportunity to learn about cutting-edge blockchain applications. Blockchain technology is bringing evolutions to the fore across industries such as web security, logistics, trade, finance, and so on, after successfully establishing the crux for bitcoin. This progress is seen in blockchain’s ever-expanding significance as an innovative payment option. The rapid adoption of smart contracts by businesses is one of the key pillars driving this rapid adoption.

Smart contracts are code lines that are stored on a blockchain network and run automatically when certain criteria and terms are met. They are, at their most basic level, programs that work the way they were supposed to work by the people who created them. A smart contract is a code-based agreement between numerous participants. The blockchain executes smart contracts, which enable it to verify, facilitate, and record transactions. These are traceable and irreversible transactions. Companies may use public blockchain while keeping total data privacy thanks to our confidential smart contracts.

Despite the promise of smart contracts, third parties frequently get access to consumers’ data. A situation that fully defies the objective of blockchain technology and renders the concept of privacy in the ecosystem meaningless. As a result, there’s a wild search for a solution that ensures perfect confidentiality in a smart contract transaction without requiring you to remain anonymous.

In response, several novel smart contract models are suited for a variety of applications where the blockchain’s decentralized, distributed, and irreversible ledger qualities are advantageous.

This is especially true when processing data needs to be kept private, even from the blockchain network’s active participants. Confidentiality is insufficient in and of itself to ensure that participants may put their trust in a smart contract of this type. It requires cryptographic integrity to ensure that participants are certain that the smart contract is exactly what they agreed to use and that it has not been tampered with.

Once Smart contracts are kept private, it allows parties to take advantage of their extremely scalable infrastructure (one of the fundamental advantages of public blockchain) while maintaining the security of their data. In other words, businesses may utilize these secure smart contracts with confidence, knowing that their transactions will remain secret and safe.

To minimize Smart contract vulnerabilities, Oasis Network has incorporated into its blockchain a first-ever privacy-enabled decentralized distributed ledger technology, and by employing this technology, it makes the internet a safer place for us and our personal information.

Confidential Smart Contract

This is likened to a black box where the developers can define the black box’s behavior, but all of the data and state inside the black box stays private, and only the information that the smart contract chooses to divulge is made public. Using layer 2 proof of stake technology, the Oasis Network has created a fully functional confidential smart contract that is highly immutable, thanks to the Consensus layer and ParaTime layer, which enable scalability and versatility while also ensuring that each ParaTime runs independently of the others.

To illustrate, on the Oasis Devnet, the Secret Ballot DApp offers a rudimentary voting system. The DApp ensures that everyone’s vote is private by using confidential-preserving smart contracts, with only vote totals being made public. Furthermore, until the voting session is over, the DApp hides each candidate’s current vote totals.

This is an excellent example of the types of use cases that confidential smart contracts are best suited for. Because transaction data and contract state are publicly viewable on Ethereum, anyone could know who voted for which candidate and discover vote totals at any time if this type of application was deployed there.

In contrast, data and smart contract states are automatically encrypted and accessible only by the smart contract in confidential smart contract transactions. This means that no one can tell how users interact with the smart contract (for example, who they voted for) and that the smart contract can choose what information to make public (i.e. vote totals).

How do confidential Smart Contracts work?

The contract’s terms should be determined first by the contractual parties. The contractual conditions are then translated into programming code when they have been finalized. The code represents several different conditional statements that explain various transaction possibilities.

The code is written and stored on the blockchain network, where it is replicated among the blockchain members.

The code is then run on all machines in the network and executed. The relevant transaction is completed if the contract’s terms are met and it is verified by all blockchain network participants.

Why You Should Use Oasis Network

The first intriguing thing about Oasis Network is that it contains functionalities that Ethereum does not. Furthermore, for Ethereum to be able to perform what Oasis can, a significant amount of work will be required. Take, for example, the time it took to switch Ethereum’s consensus method from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.

As a result, Oasis has at least two major elements that set it apart from Ethereum in terms of technological design. This does not imply that it is superior to Ethereum, but simply that it is deserving of your consideration.

Oasis is a layer-2 proof-of-stake smart-contract blockchain developed by Oasis Labs with a focus on privacy. Let’s take a closer look at that definition.

Privacy-enabled: Unlike Ethereum, where all transactions are visible to anybody, the Oasis blockchain allows users and apps to shield transactions/computations, ensuring that users and applications remain anonymous at all times.

Layer 2: A blockchain that serves as the foundation, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Polkadot.

Decentralized applications are also known as smart contracts. Consider these to be AppStore apps. Uniswap, Sushiswap, Aave, Compound, and other similar sites.

POS: This is the mechanism for reaching a consensus. Validators and nominators stake tokens to protect the network and win inflationary rewards in proof-of-stake.

However, this definition doesn’t truly address the core of Oasis Network. To do so, consider the reasons why this network is deserving of your attention. The following are some compelling reasons why you should use Oasis Network:

● Impressive technology: the Consensus Layer and Paradise Layer mechanisms are at the heart of the Oasis Network. Scalability, versatility, upgradeability, privacy protection, and so forth.

● Great software with interesting new applications like private DeFi and data tokenization.

● High-value connections and a rapidly developing community.

● High-value backers and a top-tier team.

Conclusion

As many organizations and individuals throng toward confidentializing their data and information, the potential of the Oasis Network has proven to be limitless, limited only by the community’s vision. To say the least, I’m excited about this project and will be following it for the foreseeable future, if only to see how private DeFi and tokenized data develop.

Stay connected with the StaFi project using the Links below:

Official Website |*| Telegram || Medium |*| Twitter

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Helen Imah
Helen Imah

Written by Helen Imah

I’m a TECH Lover, Blockchain Enthusiast, Strategic Digital Marketer, Data Scientist, Crypto Investor & Trader…

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