Daily Current Affairs : 9th and 10th October 2022

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Quantum Information Science
2. Click Chemistry
3. Paleogenomics
4. Global Distrubution of sodium on Moon’s surface
5. Early warning for Heatwaves
6. UN Peace Keeping Force
7. Facts for Prelims

1 . Quantum Information Science

Context: The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Alain Aspect from the University of Paris-Saclay, France; John F. Clauser of John F. Clauser and Associates, California, U.S.; and Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna, Austria. They have been awarded “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.

Why were these three physicists chosen for the award?

•  The prize has been given for experimental work in quantum entanglement, which Einstein referred to as ‘spooky action at a distance’.
• John Clauser and Alain Aspect firmed up this concept, developing more and more complex experiments that demonstrated and established that entanglement was indeed a true characteristic of quantum mechanics.
• They did this by creating, processing and measuring what are called Bell pairs.
• Anton Zeilinger innovatively used entanglement and Bell pairs, both in research and in applications. These include quantum computation and quantum cryptography.

Why is the word quantum so important here?

• Classical mechanics is the study of the dynamics of a system which uses Newton’s laws of motion at the very basic level.
• The dynamics of a few bodies or particles interacting with each other can be described using classical mechanics itself. This can be extended to many particle systems, such as a box containing millions of molecules of a gas, by employing the powerful technique of statistics, leading to statistical mechanics.
• From describing a tennis match to sending a rocket to Mars, this encompasses a whole lot of everyday activities. However, this approach breaks down when one wishes to describe subatomic particles such as light quanta.
• To understand these problems that could not be explained using classical mechanics, postulates of quantum mechanics were invoked.
  • Some of the chief architects of this were Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr.

What is at the centre of the quantum revolution?

• Many of the concepts that were useful in visualising the movement of particles in the classical realm break down when applied to particles obeying quantum mechanics.
• For example, when a tennis ball is struck, we see that it traces out a definite path in space. The path it traces out is called a trajectory, and it is eminently possible to theoretically calculate the trajectory to any given accuracy.
• Simultaneously, there is no restriction on measuring the speed, or momentum of the ball at every point on the trajectory.
• Particles that fall into the quantum regime on the other hand — electrons or photons, for example — do not even possess a definite trajectory because they are not little hard spheres that we initially imagined them to be, but are weird, wavelike quantum objects.
• Because of this, there is a limit to how precisely one can measure the position and momentum of these particles simultaneously. Many differences arise, starting from this fundamental difference.
• One important difference in the behaviour of quantum systems, when compared to classical bodies, is the concept of entanglement, which is at the heart of this year’s Nobel Prize for physics.

What is the practical use of quantum mechanics?

• Electronic devices that we employ today use transistors that apply quantum mechanical ideas. Lasers have been built that apply the quantum properties of light.

What is quantum entanglement? Does it have a classical counterpart?

• Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon by which a pair of particles, say photons, is allowed to exist in a shared state where they have complementary properties, such that by measuring the properties of one particle, you automatically know the properties of the other particle.
• This is true however far apart the two particles are, provided the entanglement is not broken.
• Eg: Take two coloured balls, one black and one white, and put them in identical boxes so that no one other than you know which box contains the black ball. One of the boxes is sent to Vienna and the other to Madurai.
  • Just by opening the box they have received, the person in Vienna (or Madurai) can know not only the color of the ball they have received but also that of the one in Madurai (or Vienna).
  • This is a classic example and is somewhat trivial because nothing more can be made of it.
  • If the ball obeys quantum mechanics, its colour is not known to the observer until he or she makes an observation. So, until the box is opened, the state of the ball inside is a superposition of black and white states.
• Like the absence of a well-defined trajectory described earlier, this is one of the features of quantum mechanics.
• If the two balls occupy a shared state to start with, which is possible in quantum mechanics, however far the two may be transported, because of entanglement, opening one box can tell the user what the other ball’s colour is. Until one box is opened, the two balls exist in a superposition of colours.
• But how is it possible to know that each ball did not have a set colour at the beginning? Was there a ‘hidden variable’ that instructed each ball which colour to take when the box was opened?
  • This is where the theory of Bell’s inequalities comes in.
  • Bell’s inequalities are theoretical insights that make it possible to differentiate between two scenarios.
  • One, that the indeterminacy of the colour of the balls is purely a quantum phenomenon, and the other, that there are hidden variables that determine the colour when opened.

2 . Click Chemistry

Context: Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and Barry Sharpless were awarded Nobel Prize for Chemistry. They won it for pioneering ‘click chemistry,’ which underpins green chemistry.

What is click chemistry?

• A big part of what chemists do is make new molecules, which is as much an art as it is science.
• The standard approach is to mimic nature.
• In the early 20th century, finding nitrogen in a form usable by plants, despite it being the most abundant element in the atmosphere, was one of the discoveries scientists were striving hard to achieve.
• German chemist, Fritz Haber cracked the code for ammonia, which combined nitrogen and hydrogen that plants could synthesise for nitrogen, and Carl Bosch figured out a way to produce it in massive amounts.
• The Haber-Bosch process is still the dominant way of producing cheap fertilizer and is at the heart of industrialised agriculture. However, this process is extremely energy intensive and polluting and the modern-day challenge is to therefore produce so-called ‘green ammonia’.
• This principle extends to most synthetic chemicals — where scientists try to create a natural substance, in a way that is different from the usual method which is often circuitous and creates several unwanted toxic by-products.
• Shortly after winning his first Nobel Prize in 2001, Sharpless began discussing ways to synthesize chemicals that were efficient and not wasteful.
• To be able to create new pharmaceuticals, Sharpless argued, chemists ought to be moving away from trying to make ‘natural’ molecules and creating new ones in simpler ways that did the job.
• As an example, he said, it was hard to coax carbon atoms — the building blocks of organic molecules — from different molecules to link to each other. Instead, why not take smaller molecules, which already have a complete carbon frame and link them using bridges of nitrogen atoms or oxygen atoms? Sure, it wouldn’t be as elegantly constructed as the natural stuff but would be efficient, greener and useful.
• This Lego-block like approach to making new molecules is the essence of ‘click chemistry.’ The ‘click’ is from an analogy he drew from seatbelts clicking snugly into buckles.

How did click chemistry come into being?

• For a chemical reaction to be called click chemistry, it has to occur in the presence of oxygen and in water, which is a cheap and environmentally friendly solvent.
• While Sharpless gave examples of existing reactions that were potentially ‘click worthy’, the actual breakthrough came in a Copenhagen laboratory.
• This reaction — the copper catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition — has now become almost synonymous with click chemistry.
• Azides and alkynes are different chemical groups that don’t combine naturally but can do so in the presence of copper ions.
• discovered that these two had combined to form a third kind of chemical structure called triazole.
• These are stable structures found in certain drugs and agricultural chemicals.
• Earlier attempts to make triazoles were inefficient and created undesirable by-products but copper changed the game.
• Sharpless and Meldal had independently discovered this out of the U.S. and Denmark respectively. Manufacturers can now add a clickable azide to a plastic or fibre and modify it to be able to conduct electricity or make them waterproof by adding an alkyne.

What is Bertozzi’s contribution?

• Click chemistry as envisaged by Meldal and Sharpless applies to the non-living world.
• However, Bertozzi began investigating glycans, which are complex carbohydrates that play an important role in many biological processes, such as when the immune system is activated.
• Bertozzi wanted to study a particular kind of glycan that attached itself to the lymph nodes, but the problem was tracking its presence in the body.
• She figured out a way, again using an azide, to attach a fluorescent molecule onto sialic acid — a constituent of glycans. However, since copper is toxic to cells, Bertozzi used click chemistry to make a product that avoided it, paving the way for making biomolecules that can be used to track diseases and corresponding cell processes.
• Researchers have now begun to make clickable antibodies to target a range of tumours. Once the antibodies attach to the tumour, a second molecule that clicks to the antibody is injected which can monitor its growth or even deliver a dose of radiation.

3 . Paleogenomics

Context: The Nobel Prize for Physiology 2022 has been awarded to Svante Pääbo, Swedish geneticist, who pioneered the field of palaeogenomics, or the study of ancient hominins by extracting their DNA.

What is the significance of Pääbo’s work?

• Pääbo has, over three decades, uniquely threaded three scientific disciplines: palaeontology, genomics and evolution.
• The study of ancient humans has historically been limited to analysing their bone and objects around them such as weapons, utensils, tools and dwellings.
• Pääbo pioneered the use of DNA, the genetic blueprint present in all life, to examine questions about the relatedness of various ancient human species.
• He proved that Neanderthals, a cousin of the human species that evolved 1,00,000 years before humans, interbred with people and a fraction of their genes — about 1-4% — live on in those of European and Asian ancestry.
• Later on, Pääbo’s lab, after analysing a 40,000-year-old finger bone from a Siberian cave, proved that it belonged to a new species of hominin called Denisova. This was the first time that a new species had been discovered based on DNA analysis and this species too had lived and interbred with humans.

How can DNA be extracted from fossils?

• The challenge with extracting DNA from fossils is that it degrades fairly quickly and there is little usable material.
• Because such bones may have passed through several hands, the chances of it being contaminated by human as well as other bacterial DNA get higher.
• This has been one of the major stumbling blocks to analyzing DNA from fossils.
• One of Pääbo’s early forays was extracting DNA from a 2,500-year-old Egyptian mummy and while it caused a stir and helped his career, much later in life he said that the mummy-DNA was likely contaminated.
• DNA is concentrated in two different compartments within the cell: the nucleus and mitochondria, the latter being the powerhouse of the cell.
• Nuclear DNA stores most of the genetic information, while the much smaller mitochondrial genome is present in thousands of copies and therefore more retrievable.
• In 1990, Pääbo took the call to analyse DNA from Neanderthal mitochondria. With his techniques, Pääbo managed to sequence a region of mitochondrial DNA from a 40,000-year-old piece of bone.
  • This was the first time a genome from an extinct human relative was pieced together.
  • Subsequently, he managed to extract enough nuclear DNA from Neanderthal bones to publish the first Neanderthal genome sequence in 2010.
  • This was significant considering that the first complete human genome was published only in 2003.

What has Pääbo’s work shown?

• Pääbo’s most important contribution is demonstrating that ancient DNA can be reliably extracted, analysed and compared with that of other humans and primates to examine what parts of our DNA make one distinctly human or Neanderthal.
• Thanks to his work we know that Europeans and Asians carry anywhere between 1%-4% of Neanderthal DNA and there is almost no Neanderthal DNA in those of purely African ancestry.
• Comparative analyses with the human genome demonstrated that the most recent common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived around 8,00,000 years ago.
• In 2008, a 40,000-year-old fragment from a finger-bone, sourced from a Siberian cave in a region called Denisova, yielded DNA that, analysis from Pääbo’s lab revealed, was from an entirely new species of hominin called Denisova.
• This was the first time that a new species had been discovered based on DNA analysis.
• Further analysis showed that they too had interbred with humans and that 6% of human genomes in parts of Southeast Asia is of Denisovan ancestry.

What are the implications of palaeogenomics?

• The study of ancient DNA provides an independent way to test theories of evolution and the relatedness of population groups.
• In 2018, an analysis of DNA extracted from skeletons at Haryana’s Rakhigarhi — reported to be a prominent Indus Valley civilisation site — provoked an old debate about the indigenousness of ancient Indian population.
• These fossils, about 4,500 years old, have better preserved DNA than those analysed in Pääbo’s labs as they are about 10-times younger. The Rakhigarhi fossils showed that these Harappan denizens lacked ancestry from Central Asians or Iranian Farmers and stoked a debate on whether this proved or disproved ‘Aryan migration.’ Palaeogenomics also gives clues into disease.
• Researchers have analysed dental fossils to glean insights on dental infections.
• Genome-wide association studies, where segments of DNA from species are compared, have found that Neanderthal DNA may be linked with autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, and prostate cancer.
• A study co-authored by Svante Pääbo and Hugo Zeberg linked an increased risk of severe respiratory failure following COVID-19 with a set of genes that are inherited from Neanderthals and is present in 50% of South Asians and 16% of Europeans.
• The presence of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in people also raised questions on whether there are hard genetic distinctions between people and their extinct evolutionary cousins.

4 . Global Distribution of sodium on Moon’s surface

Context: Scientists from Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have mapped out the global distribution of sodium on the Moon’s surface.

Key Highlights

• They used the CLASS instrument (Chandrayaan-2 large area soft X-ray spectrometer) carried by the second Indian Moon mission, Chandrayaan-2.
• This is the first effort to provide a global-scale measurement of sodium on the lunar surface using X-ray fluorescent spectra. The results have been published in a recent edition of The Astrophysical Journal.

A non-destructive way

• X-ray fluorescence is commonly used to study the composition of materials in a non-destructive manner.
• When the sun gives out solar flares, a large amount of X-ray radiation falls on the moon, triggering X-ray fluorescence.
• The CLASS measures the energy of the X-ray photons coming from the moon and counts the total number.
• The energy of the photons indicates the atom (for instance, sodium atoms emit X-ray photons of 1.04 keV) and the intensity is a measure of how many atoms are present.
• When compared to Earth, the moon is significantly depleted of volatile elements such as sodium.
• The amount of volatiles on the moon today can be used to test formation scenarios of the Earth-Moon system.
• Sodium can be used as a tracer of the volatile history of the moon according to the scientists from the Space Astronomy group of ISRO’s U.R. Rao Satellite Centre.

 New findings

• Earlier moon missions, like Apollo-11, Luna and Chang’e-5, brought back rock samples.
• The amount of sodium in the rocks was precisely gauged.
• The new study by the Chandrayaan group shows that there is a thin veneer of sodium atoms that are weakly bound to the lunar surface apart from the minor quantities found in lunar rocks (as mentioned earlier).
• These sodium atoms on the surface are liberated when enough energy is given to them by solar ultraviolet radiation and solar wind ions. The study shows a pattern in time that supports this.
• Sodium is the only element apart from potassium that can be observed through telescopes in the lunar atmosphere (its exosphere). This new map of sodium would enable understanding of the surface-exosphere connection.

5 . Early warning for Heatwaves

Context: India uses an end-to-end seamless prediction system to predict heatwaves in all time scales — short-range to seasonal. The seasonal forecast will tell the probability of frequency of heatwaves one season in advance

What is a heatwave?

• A heatwave is a period of unusually hot weather with above normal temperatures that typically lasts three or more days.
• In India, heatwaves are generally experienced during March-June.
• On average, two-three heatwave events are expected every season.
• Heatwaves are predominantly observed over two areas, central and northwest India and another over coastal Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, supported by favourable atmospheric conditions.
• Total duration of heatwaves has increased by about three days during the last 30 years and a further increase of 12-18 days is expected by 2060.
• In future climate, heatwaves will be spread to new areas including southern parts of India. Climate change is causing heatwaves more frequently, and they are much stronger and can last for more days.

Caused fatalities

• Heatwaves have multiple and cascading impacts on human health, ecosystems, agriculture, energy, water and economy.
• The recent 2022 heatwave in India and Pakistan in March-April made devastating impacts. It is estimated to have led at least 90 deaths across India and Pakistan. It also triggered an extreme Glacial Lake Outburst Flood in northern Pakistan.
• Adaptation to heatwaves can be effective to minimize the negative impacts, by developing a comprehensive heat response plan that includes early warnings, awareness rising and technology intervention.
• India has now a strong national framework for heat action plans involving the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the National and State disaster management authorities, and local bodies. Early warning systems are an integral part of this heat action plan.

Early warning system

• Heatwaves are caused by large scale atmospheric circulation anomalies like high pressure areas, upper-tropospheric, jet streams, etc.
• The global forcing like the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean modulate the frequency and duration of Indian heatwaves. Heatwave can be further accentuated by local effects like depleted soil moisture and enhanced sensible heat flux.
• Under the National Monsoon Mission, the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) had established an advanced prediction system for early warnings of heatwaves. IMD has the capability to predict the genesis, duration and intensity of heatwave events with reasonable accuracy up to four-five days in advance.
• Can we then predict heatwaves two weeks in advance and what about a season in advance?
  • A recent study published in the Scientific Reports by the scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, has shown that heatwave genesis and duration in India can be predicted with good skill up to two weeks in advance.
  • They have used the hindcasts from the MoES Extended Range Prediction System (ERPS) that uses ensemble method combining four atmospheric general circulation models.

Improved prediction

• In another recent study published in the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society last month, scientists from IMD, IITM and MoES have documented for the first time that Indian heatwaves can be predicted even one season in advance.
• They used 37 years (1981-2017) of hindcasts from the Monsoon Mission Coupled Climate Forecast Model (MMCFS) to document that seasonal predictions of frequency and duration of Indian heatwaves during April-June are very useful.
• The model could reproduce the spatial distribution of heatwave frequency and duration very well.
• The model also showed useful skill in predicting the characteristics of heatwaves for different months (April to June) separately.
• The model skill in predicting heatwaves arises due to its fidelity in reproducing the impacts of ENSO and the Indian Ocean on atmospheric circulation anomalies over the Indian region.
• Thus, we have an end-to-end seamless prediction system to predict heatwaves in all time scales, from short-range to seasonal. The seasonal forecast will provide an outlook or probability of frequency and duration of heatwaves, one season in advance. This early outlook can be further strengthened using the extended range (two weeks) and short range (four-five days) forecasts for more focused region-wise response strategies.
• Seasonal forecasts should use a multi-model ensemble (MME) forecasting strategy.
• Short-range ensemble forecasts should use higher-resolution global models, initialized with observed soil moisture data, which are available from microwave satellites and IMD’s soil moisture network. We should then expect a more advanced forecasting system for heatwaves in the near future. This is just one example of how good science can help society.

6 . UN Peace Keeping Force

Context: The number of fatalities among the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces (UNPKF) in direct attacks is growing, said UN Undersecretary General in an interview , when he visited India last week to discuss the need for more “robust” mandates and better equipment, training and technology with Indian officials.

About United Nations Peacekeeping Forces (UNPKF)

• The U.N. Peacekeeping mission is a joint effort between the Department of Peace Operations and the Department of Operational Support and aims to assist host countries to transition from situations of conflict to peace.
• The United Nations Charter gives the United Nations Security Council the power and responsibility to take collective action to maintain international peace and security.
• For this reason, the international community usually looks to the Security Council to authorize peacekeeping operations through Chapter VII authorizations.
• Most of these operations are established and implemented by the United Nations itself, with troops serving under UN operational control.
• In these cases, peacekeepers remain members of their respective armed forces, and do not constitute an independent “UN army”, as the UN does not have such a force. In cases where direct UN involvement is not considered appropriate or feasible, the Council authorizes regional organizations such as NATO, the Economic Community of West African States, or coalitions of willing countries to undertake peacekeeping or peace-enforcement tasks.
• The U.N. began its Peacekeeping efforts in 1948 when it deployed military observers to West Asia.
• The Peacekeeping mission’s role was to monitor the Armistice Agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
• U.N. Peacekeepers provide security as well as political and peacebuilding support to conflict-ridden countries.
• The three basic principles that guide U.N.’s Peacekeeping missions are:
  • Consent of the parties
  • Impartiality
  • Non-use of force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate

Who are the ‘Blue Helmets’?

• Blue Helmets are the military personnel of the U.N. that work alongside the U.N. Police and civilian colleagues to promote “stability, security, and peace processes”.
• The personnel get the name from the iconic blue helmets or berets they wear.
• All military personnel under Blue Helmets are members of their national armies first who are seconded to work under the U.N. command.
•  Currently, there are more than 70,000 military personnel enlisted as Blue Helmets. African and Asian countries outnumber their western counterparts in contributing soldiers to Blue Helmets.

What are the responsibilities of U.N. military personnel?

• U.N. military personnel can be tasked with:
  • Protecting civilians and other U.N. personnel
  • Monitoring disputed borders
  • Observing peace processes in post-conflict areas
  • Providing security in conflict zones
  • Providing security during elections
  • Assisting in-country military personnel with training and support
  • Assisting ex-combatants in implementing peace agreements

How are Blue Helmets enlisted?

• Qualified military officers from U.N. member states are recruited to serve as individual staff officers, military observers, or as part of units from an individual troop-contributing country, by the United Nations Office of Military Affairs.
• Staff officers are also deployed at the U.N. headquarters from where they monitor all aspects related to deployment of troops on the ground.
• Blue Helmets are seconded to work under the U.N. flag for periods normally of up to one year in the field, or two or three years at the headquarters.
• U.N. Peacekeeping has listed increasing the number of female military personnel as one of its top priorities.

What is India’s contribution towards United Nations Peacekeeping forces?

• Over 200,000 Indians have served in 49 U.N. Peacekeeping missions since 1948.
• Currently, 5,581 Indians are part of various U.N. Peacekeeping missions.
• In 2007, India became the first country to deploy an all-women contingent to a U.N. Peacekeeping mission.

Finances

• The financial resources of UN Peacekeeping operations are the collective responsibility of UN Member States.
• Decisions about the establishment, maintenance or expansion of peacekeeping operations are taken by the Security Council.
• According to the UN Charter every Member State is legally obligated to pay their respective share for peacekeeping.
• Peacekeeping expenses are divided by the General Assembly based upon a formula established by Member States which takes into account the relative economic wealth of Member States among other things.

7 . Facts for Prelims

Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT)

• VVPAT is a machine that is used in elections to verify that the citizen’s vote has been correctly placed.
• VVPAT means Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail. In times of political mudslinging about EVM tampering, a paper trail ensures that voter faith remains intact, strengthening participatory democracy.
• The VVPAT machine gives instant feedback to the voter, through a printed slip.
• Essentially, after a voter presses the button confirming their vote for their chosen candidate or NOTA, the VVPAT machine prints a slip containing the name of the candidate and the corresponding election symbol and automatically drops it in a sealed box.
• The VVPAT is placed in a transparent glass case, allowing the voter to see the vote.
• The voter slip is then displayed to the voter for about seven seconds.
• Then it is dropped in the storage box and a beep confirms this action. The VVPAT can be accessed by the polling officials, but not by the voters.
• The Election Commission of India has repeatedly refuted claims of EVM tampering but VVPATs have been used in some elections, presumably in order to boost voter faith in the system.
• Opposition parties have been repeatedly demanding that the Election Election introduce VVPAT to ensure free and fair elections.
• The political parties have also been demanding that at least 50 per cent of VVPAT slips should be counted and matched with total vote count recorded by EVMs.

National mobile monitoring scheme

• National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) App was launched by the Minister of Rural Development on May, 21 2021.
• This app is aimed at bringing more transparency and ensuring proper monitoring of the schemes.
• The NMMS App permits taking real time attendance of workers at Mahatma Gandhi NREGA worksites along with geo-tagged photograph.
• The app helps in increasing citizen oversight of the programme.
• The National Mobile Monitoring App is applicable for the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA workers for all the States/ Union Territories.

Exercise Malabar and International Fleet review

Malabar Exercise

• Malabar is a multilateral war-gaming naval exercise that was started in 1992.
• It began as a bilateral exercise between the navies of India and the United States.
• Two more editions of the exercise were carried out in 1995 and 1996, after which there was a break until 2002 in the aftermath of India’s nuclear tests.
• From 2002 onward, the exercise has been conducted every year.
• Japan and Australia first participated in 2007, and since 2014, India, the US and Japan have participated in the exercise every year.
• The Malabar Exercise includes simulated war games and combat manoeuvres.
• Japan will host the 2022 edition of the Malabar naval exercise consisting of India, Australia, Japan and the U.S. in the second week of November.

International Fleet review

• The Indian Navy will participate in the International Fleet Review (IFR) being hosted in the first week of November to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF).
• A fleet review is a gathering of naval ships for observation by a reigning monarch or their representative. In Indian events, the President of India reviews the fleet of the Indian Navy.

Smart contracts

• A smart contract is a self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. The code and the agreements contained therein exist across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network. The code controls the execution, and transactions are trackable and irreversible.
• Smart contracts permit trusted transactions and agreements to be carried out among disparate, anonymous parties without the need for a central authority, legal system, or external enforcement mechanism.
• Crypto exchanges, decentralised apps, the automated buying or selling of orders, and even NFT-based games often rely on smart contracts to run smoothly.
• A smart contract failure can cause platform outages, and exploitation of the codes could devalue the entire ecosystem.