What does the future mean in trading?

Futures contracts can be defined as a legal agreement between two parties regarding the process of buying or selling a specific financial asset. This transaction takes place at an agreed price between the two parties and at a specified date in advance, such as the "contract expiration date" or "contract settlement date", which represents a regulated financial derivative contract where futures contracts are typically traded on an exchange.
The future is a contract that binds both parties and cannot be cancelled. This means that when the settlement date arrives, the buyer is obligated under the contract to receive the underlying asset - that is, the traded financial instrument - regardless of its price at that date, while the seller is also obligated to relinquish the asset in exchange for the initially agreed price.
Futures contracts were known on online commodity trading platforms, where they were specifically related to trading, but at the same time, they are used in trading many other categories of financial products, including - for example, but not limited to - trading government bonds, trading indices, encrypted digital currencies, etc.