Safer smart contract programming with Scilla

Sergey, Ilya; Nagaraj, Vaivaswatha; Johannsen, Jacob; Kumar, Amrit; Trunov, Anton; Hao, Ken Chan Guan

doi:10.1145/3360611

Cited by 97 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…The essence of a smart contract is the computer code that can be executed automatically on the computer, so programming smart contracts correctly is an important research direction. Several researchers argued that developing new contract languages is an effective way to write a correct 3 presents some newly proposed programming languages such as SmaCoNat [78], Flint [83], and Scilla [85]. For instance, Regnath and Steinhorst [78] proposed a human-readable, security, and executable programming language, called SmaCoNat.…”

Section: Programming-centric Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Schrans et al [83] Flint Flint is a type-safe, capabilities-secure, contractoriented programming language specifically designed for writing robust smart contracts. Sergey et al [85] Scilla Scilla is a novel intermediate-level functional smart contract programming language, suitable to serve as a compilation target and also as an independent programming framework. Scilla aims at achieving both sufficient expressivity and tractability, while enabling formal contract verification.…”

Section: Formal Verification-centric Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Blockchain smart contracts: Applications, challenges, and future trends

Khan

Loukil

Ghedira-Guegan

et al. 2021

Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.

456

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In recent years, the rapid development of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies has influenced the financial industry by creating a new crypto-economy. Then, next-generation decentralized applications without involving a trusted third-party have emerged thanks to the appearance of smart contracts, which are computer protocols designed to facilitate, verify, and enforce automatically the negotiation and agreement among multiple untrustworthy parties. Despite the bright side of smart contracts, several concerns continue to undermine their adoption, such as security threats, vulnerabilities, and legal issues. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of blockchain-enabled smart contracts from both technical and usage points of view. To do so, we present a taxonomy of existing blockchain-enabled smart contract solutions, categorize the included research papers, and discuss the existing smart contract-based studies. Based on the findings from the survey, we identify a set of challenges and open issues that need to be addressed in future studies. Finally, we identify future trends.

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Section: Programming-centric Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Formal Verification-centric Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blockchain smart contracts: Applications, challenges, and future trends

Khan

Loukil

Ghedira-Guegan

et al. 2021

Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.

456

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Scilla [56] is a minimalistic typed functional language for writing smart contracts that compiles to the Ethereum bytecode. Scilla's semantic model is restricted, assuming actor based communication and restricting recursion, thus facilitating static analysis of Scilla contracts and ensuring termination.…”

Section: Verification Of Object Capability Programsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holistic Specifications for Robust Programs

Drossopoulou

Noble

Mackay

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Functional specifications describe what program components can do: the sufficient conditions to invoke components' operations. They allow us to reason about the use of components in a closed world setting, where components interact with known client code, and where the client code must establish the appropriate pre-conditions before calling into a component. Sufficient conditions are not enough to reason about the use of components in an open world setting, where components interact with external code, possibly of unknown provenance, and where components may evolve over time. In this open world setting, we must also consider the necessary conditions, i.e. what are the conditions without which an effect will not happen.In this paper we propose the Chainmail specification language for writing holistic specifications that focus on necessary conditions (as well as sufficient conditions). We give a formal semantics for Chainmail, and discuss several examples. The core of Chainmail has been mechanised in the Coq proof assistant.

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“…Scilla [Sergey et al 2019] is an intermediate language for smart contracts. Like Obsidian, Scilla is oriented around state machines.…”

Section: Smart Contract Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Obsidian

Coblenz

Oei

Etzel

et al. 2020

ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst.

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Blockchain platforms are coming into use for processing critical transactions among participants who have not established mutual trust. Many blockchains are programmable, supporting smart contracts, which maintain persistent state and support transactions that transform the state. Unfortunately, bugs in many smart contracts have been exploited by hackers. Obsidian is a novel programming language with a type system that enables static detection of bugs that are common in smart contracts today. Obsidian is based on a core calculus, Silica, for which we proved type soundness. Obsidian uses typestate to detect improper state manipulation and uses linear types to detect abuse of assets. We integrated a permissions system that encodes a notion of ownership to allow for safe, flexible aliasing. We describe two case studies that evaluate Obsidian's applicability to the domains of parametric insurance and supply chain management, finding that Obsidian's type system facilitates reasoning about high-level states and ownership of resources. We compared our Obsidian implementation to a Solidity implementation, observing that the Solidity implementation requires much boilerplate checking and tracking of state, whereas Obsidian does this work statically.

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Safer smart contract programming with Scilla

Cited by 97 publications

References 51 publications

Blockchain smart contracts: Applications, challenges, and future trends

Blockchain smart contracts: Applications, challenges, and future trends

Holistic Specifications for Robust Programs

Obsidian

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