Understanding Soroban | Stellar Smart Contract Platform
Tags: stellar, soroban, smartcontract, webdev
Published: 2024-06-26 11:37:57

Stellar is an open-source blockchain that enables global economic transactions. Supported by a $100 million adoption fund from the Stellar Development Foundation, this blockchain has pre-released Soroban to facilitate the building and deployment of Stellar smart contracts (SSC).

This article will help you understand this [Stellar blockchain development](https://blockchain.oodles.io/stellar-blockchain-development-services/?utm_source=devto) for smart contracts, its use cases, and more.

## What is Stellar Blockchain?
[Stellar](https://stellar.org/) is an open-source and decentralized global trading network that enables inexpensive transfers between digital currency and fiat money. Also, it allows cross-border currency exchanges between any two currencies. It uses blockchain technology, just like other cryptocurrencies, to maintain network synchronization.

Stellar is speedier, less costly, and more effective than existing blockchain-based financial access and inclusion systems. Stellar Lumens (XLM) is its native coin, facilitating international transactions.

One of Stellar’s key features is its focus on financial inclusion. Thus, Stellar aims to make financial transactions more efficient, affordable, and accessible to people worldwide, particularly those currently underserved by traditional banking systems.

It offers an efficient system for fast and low-cost digital asset issuance and transfer.

**Stellar Smart Contracts (SSC)**
Smart contracts define and secure connections via computer networks by integrating user interfaces and protocols. The goals and guiding principles of smart contract development come from concepts of secure protocols, economic theory, and legal principles.

Smart contracts are expressed as Stellar smart contracts (SSCs) on the Stellar network. Connected transactions inside an SSC operate under various limitations.

When developing SSCs, the following constraints can be taken into account and implemented:

**Multisignature**
Multisignature refers to a concept in which different people must sign transactions from an account. People can also assign thresholds and signature weights.

**Atomicity/Batching**
Several operations are combined into a single transaction under the batching principle. If one operation in a transaction fails, atomicity causes the transaction as a whole to fail.

**Sequence**
Sequence numbers represent sequences on the Stellar network. The blockchain utilizes these sequence numbers to regulate transactions and ensure that transactions fail if a substitute is present.

**Time Bounds**
Time bounds set limits on how long a transaction can be valid. They express periods in an SSC.

## Soroban — a Smart Contract Platform
[Soroban](https://soroban.stellar.org/docs) is a smart contract platform for the Stellar network. Based on WASM (web assembly) and Rust, the Stellar network supports Soroban’s Turing-complete smart contracts. When combined with the strength of the Stellar network, Soroban on Stellar will enable use cases focused on extending access to financial services.

Founders created this new type of smart contract platform for the built-to function. A preview of Soroban is live on Futurenet. Now, developers can start building and deploying smart contracts on a test system with Soroban and earn rewards for their work.

Founders built Soroban for scalability, a battery-included developer experience, and reliable access to financial channels via the Stellar network.

## Soroban Design Principles
Founders developed Soroban to perform through the following three design principles:

**Battery-included**
The intention behind creating Soroban is to provide developers with a battery-included experience. Developers have direct access to the resources they need to start quickly and deploy solutions successfully.

Soroban developers will have access to a Local sandbox for quick setup and iterative development. As a result, they can run and debug their contracts independently, locally, and without the assistance of the Stellar network.

A comprehensive and effective set of host functions and built-in contracts are also available to save time. One such function is a built-in efficient token contract that eliminates the need to copy and paste ERC-20 contracts.

**Scalability**
Another principle of Soroban is scalability. The platform offers a base that can support concurrency immediately. Soroban transactions comprise footprints as transaction dependencies. They use contemporary multi-core hardware to run group transactions simultaneously.

Soroban has a limited number of deserialization and serialization loops. The smart contract development process is easy as the platform does not have encoding and decoding, which consumes significant time and computer resources.

**Access to Financial Rail**
Soroban creates trusted connectivity to financial networks via the Stellar network. Creators integrated Soroban into the current Stellar ecosystem and tech stack, allowing developers to take full advantage of Stellar’s strengths as a tested, reliable network.

## Stellar Smart Contract Use Cases
The following are the SSC use cases:

**Digital Identity and NFTs**
Developers can use Stellar smart contracts for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). People can convert their gaming assets, certifications, credentials, and more into digital assets on the Stellar blockchain. The blockchain stores the metadata of these assets. Stellar smart contract code configures the metadata to determine ownership and reassign the same with the NFT.

**Decentralized Finance (DeFi)**
Stellar smart contracts (SSCs) enable the functioning of decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions, including borrowing, lending, tokenization, payment apps, and more. DeFi businesses utilize them to protect the atomic escrow account. Here, SSCs’ regulations control the assets. Programs will only release these assets after the fulfillment of certain conditions.

## Stellar Smart Contract Development
Are you looking for a Stellar smart contract development team? Contact our team of [Stellar blockchain developers](https://blockchain.oodles.io/about-us/?utm_source=devto), who have experience building smart contracts utilizing Soroban to design and develop smart contracts.