Ethereum Concepts What You Probably Got Wrong "Smart contracts run automatically." No. Smart contracts cannot execute themselves. There is no cron job, no scheduler, no background process. Every function needs a caller who pays gas. This single misconception is the root cause of most broken onchain designs. "Just add a timer." There are no timers. If something needs to happen at a certain time, you need someone to call the function at that time — and you need to give them a reason to do it. "The protocol team will handle that." The whole point of decentralization is that no single team operat…