This is a discussion I had with chatGPT about the subject of how to create smart contracts without a smart contract language. These shares my thoughts and ideas of how this could be done. If this IS the route taken, this would be groundbreaking changes to how smart contracts operate, the speed they operate at, the security involved and just about everything else.
Please do share your thoughts about this.
User
If you were tasked with finding a new way to make smart contracts that does not rely on a interpreted language.... where would you start? How would you do this? Any ideas?
ChatGPT
Developing smart contracts without relying on an interpreted language opens up interesting possibilities. One approach could be to leverage a compiled language, which offers performance benefits and potentially stronger security guarantees. Here's a rough outline of how you might approach this:
Choose a Compiled Language: Identify a compiled language that is suitable for smart contract development. Languages like Rust, Go, or even C/C++ could be good candidates due to their performance and reliability.
Design the Smart Contract Framework: Define a framework or library that provides the necessary functionalities for creating and executing smart contracts. This could include features such as contract deployment, state management, transaction handling, and access control.
Define a Standard ABI: Create a standard Application Binary Interface (ABI) that specifies how smart contracts interact with each other and with the blockchain. This ABI should define the data types, function signatures, and calling conventions used by smart contracts.
Implement the Compiler: Develop a compiler that translates smart contract code written in the chosen language into bytecode or machine code that can be executed on the blockchain platform. This compiler should generate efficient and secure code while preserving the semantics of the original source code.
Integration with Blockchain Platform: Integrate the compiled smart contracts with the chosen blockchain platform. This may involve developing a runtime environment or virtual machine that can execute the compiled code and interact with the blockchain's consensus mechanism and state storage.
Testing and Security Auditing: Thoroughly test the smart contract framework and the compiler to ensure correctness, security, and reliability. Perform security audits to identify and mitigate potential vulnerabilities, such as reentrancy bugs, integer overflows, or denial-of-service attacks.
Documentation and Developer Tools: Provide comprehensive documentation and developer tools to assist smart contract developers in writing, testing, and deploying their contracts. This includes tutorials, API references, debugging tools, and deployment scripts.
Community Engagement: Foster a vibrant community around the new smart contract framework by organizing workshops, hackathons, and developer meetups. Encourage collaboration and contributions from developers to improve the framework and expand its capabilities.
By following these steps, you can create a new way to develop smart contracts that offers the benefits of compiled languages while maintaining the security and decentralization properties of blockchain technology.
User
So I think VERY outside the box at times. First let me say the blockchain is programmed in rust. It has several different transaction types such as transfer, create tokens, creating nft, swap tokens (requires 2 signatures), marketing transaction records, create loans, payback loans. Its NOT a typical chain.
What I was thinking in terms of smart contracts is very different from what currently exists.
So I am thinking a smart contract has 2 parts. First a custom struct. A custom struct must contain timestamp, wallet address, tx fee, hash, signature. Everything else can be defined by the contract. Allowable types would be very basic... u8 through u128 or String type. The struct must always be less than 320 bytes total.
Next would come the instruction set for that struct. This would not be a language, but rather a configurable set of validation instructions. For example... if the struct has a key named message with a type of text, we only allow full string comparison for strings in validation. So check if this value is == to some predefined string. If the key is the timestamp, they can have options to validate the timestamp is not a future datetime, older than a given block time, older than XX minutes, etc.
Each type could have a predefined set of validation instructions. These would be setup after creating the struct, and would also have to include the id hash of the struct to match instructions to struct. When all is valid, then the instructions can perform predefined tasks such as transfer tokens, create tokens , etc. using the other transaction types.
Then instead of having a VM to read smart contracts and process them, the contracts can be accessed at the core level of the node that would validate any other transaction, it would just have specific instructions on how to validate and what to do when valid.
Am I making sense here?
ChatGPT
Yes, your concept makes sense and it's indeed thinking outside the box. Let's break it down further:
Custom Struct: You're proposing a structured way to define the data that the smart contract operates on. By enforcing a specific format for the data (timestamp, wallet address, etc.), you ensure consistency and simplify the validation process.
Instruction Set: Rather than a full-fledged programming language, you're suggesting a configurable set of validation instructions tailored to the specific data structure defined in the contract. These instructions determine how the data is validated and what actions are taken based on that validation.
Validation and Execution: The node at the core level would handle validation and execution of these contracts directly, bypassing the need for a virtual machine. This could potentially offer performance benefits and tighter integration with the underlying blockchain protocol.
Predefined Tasks: The contract would define specific tasks or actions to be executed when the validation conditions are met. These tasks could include transferring tokens, creating tokens, or other operations supported by the blockchain protocol.
Overall, your approach simplifies smart contract development by providing a structured way to define contract data and validation rules without relying on a traditional programming language. It also leverages the core functionality of the blockchain node for contract execution, potentially improving performance and efficiency. This concept could be further refined and developed into a novel approach to smart contract design and execution.