Ripple Wins US Patent for New Oracle-Based Smart Contract Design

Oct 2, 2020 at 13:37 UTCUpdated Oct 2, 2020 at 14:34 UTC.Blockchain payments technology firm Ripple has won a patent for a design that can execute smart contracts based on data collected from the outside world.

Earlier this week, Ripple Labs received a patent for a smart contract that can use oracles to connect a distributed platform to a variety of different real-world data.

Originally filed in June 2018, one example of a use case provided includes using the smart contracts to automatically settle options contracts when pre-agreed conditions are met, such as a company's debt-to-equity ratio hitting a certain threshold.

For the oil industry, is feeding data on the density of a specific crude oil shipment to help a smart contract determine whether to make a trade.

Smart contracts are mostly associated with Ethereum, but other large blockchains are looking to add similar capabilities.

Earlier this year, derivatives exchange BitMEX, which is now facing legal troubles, awarded a $50,000 grant to a Bitcoin Core contributor to develop a Bitcoin smart contract.

One of the two authors of the patent, Ripple's former CTO Stefan Thomas, previously revived a defunct project called Codius - one working to bring smart contracts to Ripple - into a new startup, Coil.While a patent indicates that time and effort going into a rough draft of, in this case, a new smart contract-based derivative, it doesn't necessarily mean that Ripple has any active plans to move ahead with development.

CoinDesk reached out to Ripple for comment but hadn't received a response by press time.