Verification of Smart Contract Business Logic: Exploiting a Java Source Code Verifier

• Smart contracts have been argued to be a means of building trust between parties by providing a self-executing equivalent of legal contracts. And yet, code does not always perform what it was originally intended to do, which resulted in losses of millions of dollars. Static verification of smart contracts is thus a pressing need. This paper presents an approach to verifying smart contracts written in Solidity by automatically translating Solidity into Java and using KeY, a deductive Java verification tool. In particular, we solve the problem of rolling back the effects of aborted transactions by exploiting KeY’s native support of JavaCard transactions. We apply our approach to a smart contract which automates a casino system, and discuss how the approach addresses a number of known shortcomings of smart contract development in Solidity.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Inbäddad systemteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Embedded Systems (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Datorsystem (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Computer Systems (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datorteknik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Engineering (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

kon (subject category)

ref (subject category)