Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets by Nick Szabo-1996

Digital cash is here today, and many more smart contract mechanisms are being designed. So far the design criteria important for automating contract execution have come from disparate fields like economics and cryptography, with little cross-communication: little awareness of the technology on the one hand, and little awareness of its best business uses other. The idea of smart contracts is to recognize that these efforts are striving after common objectives, which converge on the concept of smart contracts.