Improving the Safety of Blockchain Networks: Using Smart Contracts and AI-Driven Consensus Mechanisms to Make Transactions More Trustworthy

Blockchain technology represents a secure, decentralized solution for transaction and data management. Nonetheless, large-scale blockchain networks continue to face issues regarding security, scalability, and reliability — especially as the volume of transactions grows and cyber threats advance. This study addresses the improvement of security and reliability for blockchain networks using AI- optimized consensus protocols embedded in smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing agreements that are written into the code of blockchain networks to automate the process of a transaction, but like all computer programs, they are limited by their deterministic nature and are vulnerable to coding errors and exploits. Using artificial intelligence (AI), more specifically, machine learning (ML) techniques, this study seeks to overcome these shortcomings, and proposes a better protected, more flexible and resilient transaction perimeter. AI consensus algorithms build on existing consensus paradigms like Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), and optimize the decision-making process while providing capabilities against malicious attacks and ensuring real-time efficiency in the verification process. This paper examines how artificial intelligence can contribute to the dynamic enhancement of consensus algorithms, allowing the blockchain environment to better identify anomalies, mitigate attacks, and optimizing resource allocation. In addition, AI-based smart contracts can learn from historical data and dynamically configure their execution parameters to reduce vulnerabilities and improve robustness. AI and blockchain together encourage a safer environment where transactions are more reliable, and networks are more resilient to external threats. These results reveal how the combination of artificial intelligence-backed consensus methods and automated smart contracts enhance transaction integrity, security, and efficiency of blockchain frameworks, potentially leading toward safer, scalable, reliable decentralized networks.