Abstract: With the flourishing development of blockchain technology represented by bitcoin, the blockchain technology has moved from the era of programmable currency into the era of smart contract. The smart contract is an event-driven, state-based code contract and algorithm contract, which has been widely concerned and studied with the deep development of blockchain technology. The protocol and user interface are applied to complete all steps of the smart contract process. Smart contract enables users to implement personalized logic on the blockchain. The blockchain-based smart contract technology has the characteristics of de-centralization, autonomy, observability, verifiability and information sharing. It can also be effectively applied to build programmable finance and programmable society, which has been widely used in digital payment, financial asset disposal, multi-signature contract, cloud computing, Internet of things, sharing economy and other fields. The survey describes the basic concepts of smart contract technology, its whole life cycle, basic classification and structure, key technology, the art of the state, as well as its application scenarios and the main technology platforms. Its problems encountered at present are also discussed. Finally, based on the theoretical knowledge of the smart contract, we set up the Ethereum experimental environment and develop a system of crowdsale contract. The survey is aimed at providing helpful guidance and reference for future research of smart contract based on blockchain technology.