Cardano Introduces Smart Contracts For Financial Transactions

Marlowe, a new smart contract language for Cardano aimed primarily at financial contracts on the blockchain was revealed some days ago. The language has been developed by researchers from IOHK, a company that are the main developers and maintainers of the blockchain Cardano.

In the whitepaper, the programming language is described as modeled as an algebraic type in Haskell, together with an executable small-step semantics. The language is domain-specific and hopes are that Marlowe will be used for things such as escrow and settlements in the financial industry. In the paper, it was also revealed that a contract written in Marlowe could be compiled to a smart contract written in Ethereum and other systems.

Alongside the release of Marlowe, IOHK also released Meadow which is a tool that allows users to visualize and test different smart contract code in a browser window. Meadow itself has been written in Haskell and compiled into JavaScript. The tool makes it easier for users to understand how the smart contract operates and allows the user to simulate and analyze their smart contract, block by block.

Other improvements that IOHK has been working on recently include Project Icarus, a lightweight wallet which will serve as the Cardano wallet reference implementation. Also under development is Yoroi, a lightweight wallet that runs as a Chrome extension.

Cardano seems to be in constant progress, and with the implementation of smart contracts, IOHK has taken Cardano even further. Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK and co-founder of Cardano and Ethereum also sees the future in a bright light and thinks that Cardano will eventually become a trillion dollar economy.

What is Cardano?

https://input-output-hk.github.io/scdsl/

https://iohk.io/research/papers/#2WHKDRA8

Designing a DSL for financial contracts on blockchains: Marlowe.

– Defining an executable, small-step semantics of Marlowe in Haskell.

– Making Marlowe an embedded DSL in Haskell. This extends the expressibility of the language, as we can use all the facilities of Haskell in defining Marlowe contracts; we achieve this by defining Marlowe as a Haskell data type.

– Developing the Meadow tool that allows users to interact with and simulate the operation of Marlowe contracts and embedded Marlowe contracts.

Many have been wondering what Icarus is.  Cardano’s blog referred Icarus as a chrome extension and “a reference implementation for a lightweight wallet developed by the IOHK”.

Image Source: “Flickr”