What is Smart Contract?
Last reviewed 2026-05-03
First defined in: Ethereum: A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform (Buterin, 2013) and Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger (Wood, 2014) (2014) by Vitalik Buterin et al.
A smart contract is autonomous code deployed to a blockchain that executes deterministically when called. Solidity, Vyper, and Yul target EVM; Rust targets Solana, Sui, and NEAR; Move targets Aptos and Sui. Code is law — bugs are exploitable.
How it works
A smart contract is autonomous code deployed to a blockchain that executes deterministically when called. Solidity, Vyper, and Yul target EVM; Rust targets Solana, Sui, and NEAR; Move targets Aptos and Sui. Code is law — bugs are exploitable.
For deeper protocol-level mechanics, see the related glossary terms below or the linked DeFi Intel topic deep-dive.
Why it matters
Smart contracts are the substrate of all DeFi, NFT, and DAO activity. Without them, blockchains would only support payments.
Real-world examples
Uniswap V3 Pool, Aave LendingPool, MakerDAO Vat, Safe multisig, Chainlink Aggregator.
Related terms
Go deeper
Read the full DeFi Intel topic deep-dive or browse the complete crypto glossary.
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