What is a Smart Contract?

A smart contract is a program stored on a blockchain that runs when someone calls it. It is neither smart nor, in the legal sense, a contract. It is a vending machine: put the right thing in, the defined thing comes out, and nobody needs to approve it.

The properties that matter

• Deterministic: the same call in the same state always produces the same result.
• Public: anyone can read the deployed bytecode, and usually the source.
• Autonomous: once deployed it runs without its author, and often without any way to stop it.

"Code is law" is a warning, not a slogan

A contract does what it says, not what its author meant. There is no clause about intent and no judge to appeal to. If the code lets someone drain it, that is not a violation of the contract — it is the contract, working.

This is why audits exist, and why an unaudited contract holding real money is a real risk rather than a paperwork gap. It is also why the phrase "the contract is verified" means only that the published source matches the deployed bytecode. It says nothing whatsoever about whether that source is safe.

Verified means "this is genuinely the code that is running". It does not mean "this code is safe", and confusing the two has cost people a great deal of money.