An information system for the evaluation of blockchain smart contracts' effectiveness
Abstract
Blockchain smart contracts have quickly become a focal point of research and development. Their autonomous, decentralized, transparent and secure nature allows for enforcement of agreement between multiple parties, with no need for trust as a prerequisite and no intermediaries to facilitate the relationship. However, this shift in paradigm, the significant difference with conventional software, and a variety of decentralization specifics has made development of reliable and effective smart contracts extremely difficult. The tendency has been shown by the short, yet turbulent history of smart contracts, full of numerous attacks, exploits, thefts, and failures. In this paper, the authors address this by developing an information system for the automated evaluation of the effectiveness of blockchain smart contracts. The system implements a previously created formal model that is used to calculate the effectiveness of a smart contract, based on specified factors. The information system provides as a result the level of effectiveness in the form of an output metric called Smart Contract Index of Effectiveness, which quantifies the level of potential risk to the effectiveness of a smart contract. System requirements, architecture, technologies and process are discussed. Direction for future development of the information system and further specification of its scope and functionality is also provided.
References
2. 5 Major Types of Blockchain Protocols | Analytics Steps, [online] Available at: https://www.analyticssteps.com/blogs/5-major-types-blockchain-protocols [Accessed January, 8th, 2023].
3. Blockchain Strategy | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu), [online] Available at: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/blockchain-strategy [Accessed January, 8th, 2023].
4. Mavridou, A., Laszka, A., Stachtiari, E., Dubey, A. (2019). VeriSolid: Correct-by-Design
Smart Contracts for Ethereum. In: Goldberg, I., Moore, T. (eds) Financial Cryptography and Data
security. FC 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11598. Springer, Cham.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32101-7_27
5. Liu, Jing & Liu, Zhentian. (2019). A Survey on Security Verification of Blockchain Smart
Contracts. IEEE Access. 7. 77894-77904. 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2921624
6. A. Panayotov and P. Ruskov, "Measuring the effectiveness of blockchain smart contracts," 2022 International Conference Automatics and Informatics (ICAI), 2022, pp. 73-77, doi: 10.1109/ICAI55857.2022.9960013.
7. Apps Script – Google Apps Script, [online] Available at: https://www.google.com/script/start/ [Accessed January, 8th, 2023].
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
By submitting a paper for publishing the authors hereby comply with the following provisions: 1. The authors retain the copyrights and only give the journal the right for first publication while licensing the work under Creative Commons Attribution License, which grants permissions to others to share the contribution citing this journal as first publication of the text. 2. The authors may enter separate, additional contractual relations for non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work in this journal (e.g. to upload it in an institutional depository, or to be published in a book), given that they cite the first publication in this journal. 3. The authors are allowed and are encouraged to publish their works online (e.g. to upload it in an institutional depository, personal websites, social networks, etc.) before, during, and after the submission of the paper here, because this may lead to productive exchange, as well as earlier and larger referencing of the published works (see The Effect of Open Access).