The Unravelled Tale of Contract Ownership in Blockchain Technology
Blockchain consists of a series of public ledgers that contain all the information regarding the crypto assets. They are important in ascertaining the address that is the rightful owner of a smart contract while also indicating any ownership transfers. However, the ownership of smart contracts is not such a well-known and understood process. To understand the process better, read on to find out.
Aims of Ascertaining Contract Ownership
To begin with, many smart contracts have a requirement that they must either be owned or controlled in some way or another. It is crucial for allowing several essential functions within the blockchain, such as administrative functions or withdrawing funds.
Similarly, crypto financial audit firms require one to demonstrate ownership of their crypto assets. It helps gauge one's crypto assets, useful in calculating the taxes due. Ascertaining ownership of contracts in a DeFi platform does just that.
During blockchain protocol audits, the smart contract ownership must be ascertained. It plays a crucial role in gauging the addresses that can play specific essential roles, such as administrative. Such roles can influence its susceptibility to attacks on the blockchain. The top protocol audit firms, such as Solidproof and PWC Switzerland, to name a few, carry out contract ownership checks.
Standardisation of Contract Ownership
Contract Wallets
Smart Contracts Trade Exchanges
Contract Registries
A standard of verifying that the rightful owners have submitted a contract before accepting it is mandatory for the registries.
Demonstrating Ownership of Contracts

Understanding the contract ownership depicted
There is an "onlyOwner" modifier on line number 7. Its purpose is to ensure that all functions within the modifier can be executed by the contract's owner only.
There is an "Add_pharmas" function that starts from lines 12 to 18 that runs concurrently with the "onlyOwner" modifier. It ensures that the addition of any clinical sponsors is reserved for the owner alone. Any attempt by other users to execute the function is declined automatically.
Forms of Contract Ownership
Under single ownership, one single account reserves all ownership to a contract. An ownable.sol contract offers the most basic form of such ownership. The owning account can perform administrative roles and can either opt to transfer or renounce ownership to the contract.
Shared ownership or co-ownership is becoming an increasingly popular way to hold contracts legally. It is done by tokenizing a contract, which can be summed up as creating fractions of the contract. Effective trade execution is made possible with immense speed, a trustless system, and all nodes’ massive processing power on a blockchain.
The smart contracts' self-executing nature also greatly reduces the need for legal suits in the event of a fault. All member parties conform to the underlying code's rules, creating a transparent trade process.
Author's Note
One needs to understand if they are a sole owner or co-owner of a contract and their permission. It will also become increasingly important to know of and ascertain one's ownership of contracts as government legislations start covering crypto assets.