Glossary
Smart Contract
A program deployed at an on-chain address that executes deterministically when called, with its own balance and storage.
A smart contract is code stored on a blockchain. Once deployed, it has its own address, balance, and persistent storage; anyone can call its public functions by sending a transaction, and the network executes the code deterministically.
Smart contracts are how DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and bridges actually work — each is just a set of contracts implementing the relevant rules. The trade-off is that the code is the rules: bugs cannot be patched the way a web backend can, only re-deployed or governed via the contract's own upgrade path.