Digital RMB vs. Public Chain Smart Contracts: What Are the Differences in Technical Architecture?

【ChainWen】Smart contracts look the same, but in fact, they are very different. Someone knowledgeable in this area recently shared the fundamental differences between Digital RMB and public chain smart contracts.

In simple terms, the essence of both types of contracts is the same—conditional trigger to automatically execute code. But the details are quite complex.

The smart contracts used by Digital RMB are based on an account system and are restricted Turing complete. It sounds impressive, but in reality, it simply means programming is strictly limited within templates approved by the central bank, supporting only some preset, relatively simple conditional trigger functions. Why do it this way? Mainly for security and risk control considerations. After all, it involves the financial system, and you can’t try everything like on a public chain.

In contrast, smart contracts on public chains are fully Turing complete. For example, programming languages like Solidity allow you to write much more flexible and free code.

Interestingly, the technology of Digital RMB fully supports these fully Turing complete programming languages. From a technical perspective, it’s not a problem at all. The real difficulty lies in designing a set of standards and access mechanisms that can be accepted by the financial system while ensuring security audits. This is the true challenge we face.