Who will pick up the bill when your smart contract is buggy and everything is lost?

I always thought people underestimated the challenge of blockchain and smart contracts. While smart contracts have many benefits, like information security, no third-party required to verify authenticity, efficiency in execution, and much more, smart contracts can be complicated code, buggy, and lead to disasters. Chasing bugs on the blockchain (MIT Technology Review) provides examples of such disasters, where tens of millions of dollars have been lost and cannot be recovered.

That opens the door to a new business opportunity that will attract many players over the coming years: auditing blockchains and the code of smart contracts. Not making them bulletproof and guaranteeing that there will be no bugs, but ensuring the code is robust and that smart contracts will behave as expected. Challenge: finding the right talents to staff these “audit teams” with top-notch engineers who can make a difference.

I am not saying you should not push blockchain and smart contracts. But make sure you have an experienced team building them, and consider having a second pair of eyes looking at the code. Because once they are out there, it might be too late to make any changes and avoid a disaster. It will often be too late when you know about the tragedy.