The Stellar Blockchain , which is powered by the cryptocurrency XLM and includes the Soroban smart contract platform , is Turing complete. This means that it has the ability to perform any computation that can be expressed algorithmically, making it capable of handling a wide range of complex tasks and operations. As a result, developers can use the platform to create and execute a diverse array of smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) that require sophisticated logic and computation.
The Turing completeness of the Stellar platform and the Soroban smart contract system is an important feature for developers, as it enables them to build a wide variety of applications and services that can run on the network. This flexibility and power are valuable for creating decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other blockchain-based solutions that require complex logic and interaction.
A Developers Abilities Enhanced
Developers can leverage the Turing completeness of the Stellar platform and the Soroban smart contracts to create custom financial instruments, automated trading systems, decentralized exchanges, secure multi-signature wallets, and much more. Additionally, the platform’s ability to handle complex computational tasks opens the door to a wide range of potential use cases across numerous industries, including supply chain management, healthcare, gaming, and beyond.
With Turing completeness, the Stellar platform and Soroban smart contracts are capable of supporting advanced programming constructs, such as loops, conditionals, and recursion, allowing developers to build sophisticated and powerful applications. This flexibility is a key factor in the platform’s appeal to developers who seek to create innovative and complex decentralized solutions for programmable Money.
Conclusion to understand – I thought Stellar had Smart Contracts Already?
In summary Smart contracts were already available on the Stellar blockchain. This was achieved via operations brought about by Protocol updates, which were introduced into the network via votes from the community for the proposals of these new protocols. With a combination of these operations and off chain programmability with languages, such as go, JavaScript, typescript, python etc and API SDKs such as horizon; you were and are still able to create smart contracts. Having said that the Smart contracts were not Turing complete. There was several attempts to make these smart contracts Turing complete. With a set amount of automation via Serverless servers. Stellar Turrets had made this possible and could be considered a Lay 2 solution. The Stellar blockchain, with its Soroban smart contract platform, is Turing complete, providing developers with the flexibility and computational power needed to build a wide range of decentralized applications and smart contracts to meet diverse industry needs. A major advantage. Is that any Blockchain can use Soroban to bridge their assets, oracles included. This gives Ethereum major competition.