Trust Contracts: Human Readable, Machine Readable Smart Contracts
This article was published in Medium before by A team member MyungSan Jun
BOScoin: Self-Evolving Cryptocurrency Platform
What are Trust Contracts? How are BOScoin Trust Contracts different from Ethereum Smart Contracts? What distinct value are Trust Contracts trying to deliver?
Trust Contracts are a type of Smart Contract used to build DApps (Decentralized Applications) on the blockchain. We chose the name “Trust”, because we believe “Trust” is the key component for developing DApps.
Unlike Ethereum Smart Contracts, Trust Contracts are NOT Turing-Complete, they are decidable. In order to overcome Ethereum Smart Contract’s non-decidability, BOScoin Trust Contracts use a more contained and comprehensive ontology language. BOScoin is not building a digital contract platform that can run any program. We’re fully focused on building a platform for reliable contracts.
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Human Readable Contracts
BOScoin Trust Contracts are comprised of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and the Timed Automata Language (TAL). The OWL and TAL data structure make DApps on the BOScoin blockchain human readable and machine readable.
Ethereum contracts can only be read by the developers who developed it, because the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) requires advanced knowledge in protocol language.
On the other hand, BOScoin Trust Contracts are written in SDLang. SDLang enables people with limited programming experience to read software. Our ultimate goal is to allow anyone to be able to read BOScoin’s software. A comprehensive guide on how to read/write RDF with SDLang will be available soon.
< Trust Contracts Sample written in SDLang in BOScoin Whitepaper>
Ultimately, we aim to design a user-interface that will make Trust Contracts appear like your everyday contract. We envisage a standard template with a blank-fields that will enable anyone to create and read Trust Contracts.
Machine Readable Contracts
As the OWL is W3C compliant, the OWL language and taxonomy will be easy for any developer learn.
Suppose you are building a P2P lending service. If you use the taxonomy ‘contract’, the term may have multiple relations with other terminologies. By using the OWL protocol you won’t need to redefine the term ‘contract’.
BOScoin’s Owlchain can infer the relations of data to: check whether there are data inconsistencies and whether there are missing contract components. If essential components such as the ‘contract party’ field are mistakenly omitted, the OWL reasoner, ‘TAL’ will inform you that the essential component has been omitted.
<The related terminologies with ‘contract’ defined in FIBO (Financial Industry Business Ontology)>
When the DApps use a standard vocabulary set defined by OWL, the data will be compatible between different DApps.
If two DApps use the term ‘interest’ by referring the FIBO (Financial Industry Business Ontology) the meaning of interest is always interpreted as, ‘extra money that someone receive if he has invested a sum of money’. As DApps use same vocabulary set, DApps can communicate with each other, without additional definitions of their data.
On the contrary, DApps on Ethereum cannot communicate with each other. They are independent applications that have no common denominator (Similar to PowerPoint and a Calculator). This means that if two developers were building separate DApp for healthcare, there would be no inter-connections between the two programs. The shortcoming of DApps on Ethereum would be more and more evident with the growth of the ecosystem.
The fact that DApps can exchange data, means the machine can read data on the blockchain. If machines can read the data, there is even a possibility that A.I. can be incorporated into the blockchain. This capability allows DApps on the blockchain gain enormous productivity.
Readable Trust Contracts
BOScoin Trust Contracts will enable human and machine readability on the blockchain. Trust Contracts are the evolution of Smart Contracts for developers, non-technical users, and possible A.I.