Contracts

In Essential, state belongs to contracts that declare it, similar to other blockchains. However, unlike traditional imperative blockchain languages (e.g., Solidity), Essential uses a declarative approach.

Imperative Smart Contracts typically:

• Take inputs and execute a sequence of operations.
• Update state as a side-effect of these operations.

In contrast, Essential’s declarative contracts achieve state updates without execution. Instead of executing steps, Essential starts with a proposed atomic state mutation (a set of new state values). It then substitutes these values into a contract to check their validity. This approach reverses the typical order seen in imperative contracts.