Glossary
Marlowe
A domain-specific language for financial contracts on Cardano — declarative, formally analyzable, designed for non-developer authors to specify legally-meaningful contracts.
Marlowe is a DSL — and an associated visual editor — designed by IOHK for financial contracts on Cardano. The language is deliberately restricted: contracts are sequences of typed actions (deposits, choices, payments, timeouts), making them statically analyzable and provably bounded in execution.
The model targets users who are not Haskell developers — lawyers, financial engineers, auditors — and who need contracts that read close to a legal document. Marlowe compiles down to Plutus for on-chain execution.