Smart contract in banking for Ukraine’s economy digitalization

Abstract

Smart contracts are one of the digital technologies that have the potential to significantly alter the way market participants interact. It is emphasized in the research that a smart contract is a specialized computer protocol that allows negotiating parties to exchange assets between themselves: stocks, money, or property without involving a third party as an intermediary. It should be noted that smart contracts also have a wide area for use not only in the financial sector, but also in other sectors of the economy, and the global trend towards digitalization is one of the fundamental drivers of the development of this tool. The most recognizable technology for the operation of smart contracts today is blockchain. It is mentioned that blockchain guarantees the reliability and security of the concluded contracts in terms of their confidentiality, immutability, and permanence. Four basic stages of a blockchain-based smart contract were revealed. It is stated in the article that one of the most promising applications for smart contracts is the automation of the provision of banking services, such as supply chain financing, mortgage lending and small business lending. The automatic implementation of the full lending process, from application to credit risk assessment, mortgage renewals, title transfer, and mortgage servicing and securitization, can be facilitated by sharing borrower information and digital versions of multiple registries and title documents.It is emphasized that smart contracts have a number of advantages over traditional paper-based contracts. It's important to remember that no matter how advanced technology gets, there's always the risk of IT-system vulnerabilities. The future of smart contracts in banking was forecasted. Many banking processes and legal agreements will be substituted by blockchain-based finance solutions in the future; however the shift will be slow. Incumbent banking institutions are unlikely to completely relinquish control of their databases from unknown third parties. Most likely, groups of banking institutions will use authorized blockchains, and customers will only interact with trusted nodes, and not directly with the ledger,