Smart Contract

Part of a larger look at Blockchain:  in O'Reilly

The concept of smart contracts in O'Reilly.

While the initial blockchain implementation (bitcoin) wasn't intended to deliver a smart contract platform, it inherently contained a mechanism for keeping track of ownership of bitcoins. The expansion of this concept within a blockchain was exposed by Ethereum. But what exactly is a smart contract? To put it as simply as possible, it is a mechanism for ensuring that software can be executed, audited, and prove what it did. Fundamentally, a smart contract can be created with nothing more than a microservice with a trigger event, otherwise known as function-as-a-service (FaaS) or a serverless model. ... "

A simple example, but in theory any kind of contract could b presented this way.  Have yet to see good examples about how this has been taken beyond the simple 'switch' case.   Usual and legal contracts are usually written logically and formally, so they can be understood.  Even smulated to see how the agreement influences some quantitative measure.   And further, how can these contracts be maintained?