The contract is the sovereign tool employed to manage agreements between entities in
today’s society. It plays a crucial role in a variety of different fields, ranging from politics
to finance. This fact implies the efficiency of these applications is determined in part by
the efficiency of the contracts they rely on.
Despite their important role, contracts have changed relatively little in the last few
centuries and remain based on an outdated technology of bureaucracy and procedures
done by hand. Such systems are full of unnecessary complications, are incredibly wasteful
in terms of time, money and resources, and are susceptible to human failure.
In the last few years, a type of contract represented by a computer program has
appeared. This concept, known as a smart contract, is based on the emerging blockchain
technology. Blockchain is a type of distributed system which assures the immutability of
data via the use of mathematically secure cryptographic techniques and that, as will be
discussed, is well-suited for the implementation of smart contract systems.
Transitioning contracts into the digital era would not only allow them to catch up
to the technological pace of society but also would be advantageous from a safety and
efficiency standpoint. This body of work will test the feasibility of using blockchain-based
smart contracts to facilitate the first steps of this evolution.
This thesis assembles a proof of concept platform that supports the specification and
execution of smart contracts on a blockchain network. This proof of concept will in
particular target the use case of opening a bank account, aiming to create an efficient,
permanent, reliable and safe process.
To achieve this, we constructed a Hyperledger Fabric network. We present herein
the system developed and discuss the nuances pertaining to deploying a codebase on a
blockchain, the evaluation of our system, and finally some visions for further development
of this and related use cases
