[davidgerard]

In theory, but in practice almost nobody did.

I've been looking into this question. Szabo first proposed "smart contracts" in 1994, but Ethereum is basically the first practical smart contracts platform ever - the first one that people actually use a whole lot.

(You can squint at things and say "well that's a bit like a smart contract", but that's retrospectively applying a label - like calling Git a "blockchain". I'm speaking of things that were expressly labeled "smart contracts".)

[DonbunEf7]

Too bad it's not the first secure smart-contract platform; that honor probably goes to the folks who developed Joule, E, etc. in the mid-90s. Szabo and his contemporaries were steeped in capability theory, but Ethereum glossed over all of that in favor of hype and cash.

[davidgerard]

Worse is better, yet again.