Too Long; Didn't Read
In 1994, Nick Szabo, a legal scholar and computer scientist, coined the term “<a href="http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/CDROM/Literature/LOTwinterschool2006/szabo.best.vwh.net/smart_contracts_2.html" target="_blank">smart contract</a>” to describe the ability to embed contracts, a legal construct, into computer code.