Understanding Soroban | Stellar Smart Contract Platform
Published: 2023-05-29 11:26:14

The open-source Stellar blockchain enables international business transactions. Soroban has been pre-released on the blockchain to make it easier to construct and deploy Stellar smart contracts (SSC). You may learn more about this Stellar blockchain development for smart contracts, its application cases, and other things by reading this article.

## Stellar Blockchain
Stellar 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. Like other cryptocurrencies, it keeps the network synchronized via blockchain technology.
 
Stellar is more efficient, speedier, and less expensive than alternative blockchain-based platforms for financial access and inclusion. The native cryptocurrency of Stellar for facilitating international transactions is called Stellar Lumens (XLM). 
It provides a quick and affordable solution for the issuance and transfer of digital assets. 

## 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. 
Stellar smart contracts (SSCs) are how smart contracts are expressed on the Stellar network. Connected transactions within an SSC must adhere to various limitations in order to operate. The following constraints can be considered and applied when creating SSCs:

**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**
Batching is the idea of combining multiple operations into a single transaction. If one operation in a transaction fails, the entire transaction will fail due to atomicity. 
**Sequence**
On the Stellar network, sequence numbers represent sequences. 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
A smart contract platform for the Stellar network is called Soroban. The WASM (web assembly) and Rust-based Stellar network enables Soroban's Turing-complete smart contracts. Soroban on Stellar will enable use cases centred on extending access to financial services when combined with the power of the Stellar network. 
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 creating and deploying smart contracts on a test system with Soroban and can 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
Soroban's creators created it with the following three design tenets in mind:
**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. 
A local sandbox will be available to Soroban developers 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**
Scalability is another Soroban idea. The platform provides a foundation that supports concurrency right away. Transaction dependencies in Soroban transactions include footprints. They conduct group transactions concurrently using modern multi-core hardware. 
Soroban does not have the majority of the 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**
Through the Stellar network, Soroban establishes secure connections to financial networks. The Soroban technology stack and ecosystem were merged by the Soroban creators. Developers can thus fully benefit from Stellar's advantages as a tried-and-true 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)**
Decentralised finance (DeFi) solutions, like as borrowing, lending, tokenization, payment apps, and more, are made possible by stellar smart contracts (SSCs). They are used by DeFi companies to safeguard the atomic escrow account. Here, the assets are governed by SSC regulations. Programmes won't disclose these materials until specific requirements have been met. 

## Stellar Smart Contract Development
Looking for a Stellar smart contract development team? Get in touch with our team of Stellar blockchain developers, who have experience building smart contracts utilizing Soroban to design and build smart contracts.

https://blockchain.oodles.io/blog/soroban-stellar-smart-contract/
https://blockchain.oodles.io/stellar-blockchain-development-services/