A new Ethereum Standard has been proposed. While I rarely cover still developing tech, ERC1538 is an interesting one worth bringing up.
Smart contracts are the current and next big thing in cryptocurrencies. They could change the way we do business. They could eliminate countless middle men in supply chains. They could create entirely new businesses that don’t even have to be manned. When a conscious AI finally emerges, it will likely kill us all, but before that happens we will likely interact with it through smart contracts.
But smart contracts are currently limited in their flexibility. Once one is created, it is set in stone. That, of course, goes back to the old programming trope, “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature!” and in this case that is true. Most smart contracts are meant to be locked in stone. The idea being that the terms of the deal can’t be changed and therefore everyone goes in with open eyes and knows exactly what to expect.
That can be frustrating though. The world is changing all of the time, the crypto world especially. And there are times when updating a contract is necessary. The technology could be updated. The political or economic situation could make the original contract unprofitable. A company who wishes to stay in compliance could have been told by authorities that their first contract was illegal.
Whatever the case, there are plenty of reasons one might want to change a smart contract once its been deployed and ERC1538 “Transparent Contract Standard” is designed to do just that. Unlike ERC721[1] and ERC20[2], ERC1538 isn’t an entirely new set of tokens. Rather it is a standard to add to current standards like ERC20 and ERC721 that will enable newly deployed contracts to be
