The promise of smart contract adoption is held back by crypto silos

The internet is buzzing over recent developments in decentralized finance, or DeFi — smart contracts are hotter than ever. You might think you missed the coronation ceremony, but smart contracts are actually used in only a small corner of the crypto world, albeit a corner worth billions of dollars. It’s a promising concept that has gone widely unused in the business world.

Despite the headlines and in spite of crypto-cloistering, smart contracts are not overhyped. The ability to execute secure and complex business transactions is a barrier that keeps plenty of people out of business altogether. Moreover, every major company in the world would jump at a meaningful chance to reduce expenses, due to the endless legal fees involved with business transactions. Although tedious and expensive, unknown business partners must develop a sense of trust between each other to ensure the fulfillment of contracted work. Smart contracts can streamline this process and lower costs for everyone.

While all of this is true and exciting, smart contracts are almost only used in the world of cryptocurrencies. Although there are billions of dollars flowing through smart contracts, they remain locked in this speculative world of crypto trading. What are smart contracts, and what will it take to turn these transformative promises into a popular process?

What makes a contract smart?

There’s nothing inherently smart about smart contracts. Like SpaceX and Chumbawamba, smart contracts are poorly named. The easiest way to understand smart contracts is to think of them as computer programs. As with any contract, these programs bring together two or more parties in a binding agreement. While normal contract agreements are paper-intensive (even digitally), heavily reliant on legalese and slow to form consensus, smart contracts are relatively lightweight, fast and flexible.

Smart contracts are natural outgrowths of blockchains and related distributed ledger technologies, or DLTs. Because of the transparency and immutable nature of DLTs, smart contracts bring parties together through security and trust. Before blockchains, the idea of digital contracts was unimaginable, as each party would have no way to ensure digital trust and security.

The legal expertise and careful deliberation needed for contract work are replaced by code and automation in smart contracts. Once two or more parties enter into a smart contract, and the contract is automatically saved under ideal, secure conditions. This helps businesses save time and money, while also opening up for more opportunities. So, what’s the holdup? Why aren’t smart contracts more mainstream?

That’s going to cost you

Since most smart contracts are built on blockchains, every transaction requires a fee to validate the block and inscribe it into the DLT. The reason for the fee is that blockchains rely on miners to perform the computing labor involved, by adding new blocks to the network. No fees means no incentive for miners, and this would not bring new transactions. So, blockchains have fees, but what’s worse is that the fees are volatile, fluctuating according to network traffic and currency valuations.

Related: Going feeless is the only way to enable blockchain adoption

If you’re a business owner thinking about moving parts of your operation to a blockchain-enabled smart contract, problems with fees could become a major headache. If you’re an individual who would like to leverage blockchains to protect yourself in a business agreement, the fees involved with smart contracts might be too expensive to consider. A zero-fee structure would be ideal, but the fees must be transparent and stable, so people can fit smart contracts within their budget.

The most widely used smart contract platform in the world right now, Ethereum, becomes more expensive to use the more popular it becomes. This is the opposite of how a business is supposed to function, and a clear sign that something is fundamentally wrong with…