Why smart contracts can’t be fully automated

Blockchain technology has been generating excitement in the public and private sectors for the past several years for many reasons — a prominent one being support for self-executing contracts commonly referred to as smart contracts. But while smart contracts have the potential to streamline many business processes, full automation isn’t likely anytime in the foreseeable future.

“Smart contracts are a combination of some certain binary actions that can be translated into code and some reference to plain language like we have today that is open to litigation if you mess up,” says Antonis Papatsaras, CTO of enterprise content management company SpringCM, which specializes in contract workflow automation. “I think it’s going to take forever.”

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