Survey on Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts: Technical Aspects and Future Research

The industrial and computing research context revolutionized in various directions during the last decades. The blockchain-based smart contract embraced as a significant research interest due to its distinguishing features such as decentralized storage of transactions, autonomous execution of contract codes, and decentralized establishment of the trust. Blockchain-based smart contracts can transform the working architecture of almost all industries towards elevated service standards. The use cases of blockchain based smart contracts range from industrial applications such as cryptocurrency systems towards logistics, agriculture, real estate, energy trading and so forth. The decentralization concept of blockchain is one of the biggest leaps in technology research since future computing got a super momentum towards the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing. A plethora of research is in progress to investigate the opportunities for the applicability of smart contracts and blockchain technologies to various industries. It is important to identify the technical aspects of blockchain-based smart contracts to further improve and sharpen the capabilities which they already owed. This survey is conducted to identify the significant technical aspects of blockchain-based smart contracts with the associated future research directions.