Smart Contracts: Terminology, Technical Limitations and Real World Complexity

Mik, Eliza

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3038406

Cited by 39 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…In particular, the wording of regulatory policies in plain text can be rather convoluted and such policies do not lend themselves easily to mapping into an executable language with the correct semantics. To illustrate, consider a sample clause in the purchase agreement between Fresh Export and Best Fruit: “in case of an unforeseen situation, such as drought, excessive rain, fire, war, or for any other reasonable cause that is beyond the parties’ control, neither party shall be considered liable for losses and damages.” First, this clause contains “desired ambiguities” (Mik, ), such as “reasonable cause,” which leave parties the flexibility to work out a resolution when an unanticipated event occurs. However, such a clause can hardly be represented formally or measured objectively to translate accurately into smart contract code.…”

Section: Blockchain System Design: Challenges and Research Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, it is practically impossible to ensure that the software code is bug‐free. Hence, risk is not entirely eliminated (Mik, ). This is clearly a limitation of blockchain technology.…”

Section: Blockchain System Design: Challenges and Research Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, within a global supply chain, a smart contract may be executed by globally distributed parties. Within the current US legal framework, smart contracts are enforceable under contract law (Mik, ). However, if a smart contract is executed by parties across jurisdictions, an overarching governing law is essential to determine what specific law will apply for the interpretation of the smart contract and which jurisdiction will adjudicate disputes (Levi & Lipton, ).…”

Section: Blockchain System Design: Challenges and Research Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, if a smart contract is executed by parties across jurisdictions, an overarching governing law is essential to determine what specific law will apply for the interpretation of the smart contract and which jurisdiction will adjudicate disputes (Levi & Lipton, ). Finally, there are even more complicated issues related to the interpretation of legal prose in smart contracts as discussed by Mik (). Given the early stage of smart contract adoption, most smart contracts are used mainly to execute simple transactions, such as payment instructions.…”

Section: Blockchain System Design: Challenges and Research Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is Blockchain a Silver Bullet for Supply Chain Management? Technical Challenges and Research Opportunities

Liu²,

2019

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Blockchain technology is based on the idea of a distributed, replicated, and immutable digital ledger that enables parties to conduct business in a trustful and transparent way without the need for a central authority or intermediary. Its most popular application thus far is in payment system applications, e.g., bitcoin. This disruptive technology is expected to contribute significant business value to multiple industry sectors, including supply chain management (SCM), where it can provide greater visibility, accountability and trust in interorganizational business collaboration. In this article, we review some fundamental concepts of Hyperledger Fabric, one of the most mature permissioned blockchain implementations. Further, we use the context of a food supply chain to highlight key design and implementation challenges for blockchain, and provide a strategic assessment of its prospects. Our aim is to dispel misguided notions and myths about blockchain as a silver bullet for all businesses. We believe it is important to penetrate the hype to allow a more realistic understanding of this technology. Blockchain is a high‐cost, high‐overhead storage medium. It is viable only when its higher cost is counterbalanced by the set of benefits that are identified by a careful and thorough analysis of the business. Thus, it will be used mainly for storing important data related to interorganizational transactions among partners where trust is lacking and provenance and visibility are critical. Our paper offers enterprises a systematic way to understand the real costs and risks of blockchain adoption. The insights gained in the SCM context also apply to other areas such as financial services and healthcare that could leverage the full potential of blockchain technology.

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Section: Blockchain System Design: Challenges and Research Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Blockchain System Design: Challenges and Research Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Blockchain System Design: Challenges and Research Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Blockchain System Design: Challenges and Research Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Is Blockchain a Silver Bullet for Supply Chain Management? Technical Challenges and Research Opportunities

Liu²,

2019

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“…Essentially, smart contracts do not rely on human intervention, and their implementation is guided and overseen by other nodes in the blockchain network. Therefore, once the contract is triggered, the scripted contract self-executes (Mik, 2017). This is often achieved using trigger events when scripting the contact.…”

Section: Speed and Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

On Smart Contracts and Organisational Performance: A Review of Smart Contracts through the Blockchain Technology

Allam

2018

Review of Economic and Business Studies

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As the Blockchain technology is gaining momentum in popular culture through Cryptocurrencies, its full implication and application to businesses, on a concrete and factual level, is still seen to be in its infancy stage. While the technology provides numerous advantages regarding stability, trust, speed and others, the robustness of the technology is not widely disseminated. This is further coupled by the common notion of resistance to change in business management processes. This paper explores the concept of Smart Contracts through the blockchain technology and its relevance to the business sector and further outlines the advantages and limitations of its applicability as of date.

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A decentralized lightweight authentication protocol under blockchain

Gao-jian

et al. 2022

Concurrency and Computation

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With the continuous development of blockchain technology, blockchain gradually becomes to play an important role in the fields of finance, medicine, and new energy. In the certification of the membership of the blockchain, a third‐party certificate authority (CA) is used for certification. Considering the centralized structure of CA, and it is difficult for users to evaluate the credibility of CA. A decentralized blockchain membership authentication scheme and a key agreement protocol based on the elliptic curve are proposed by us. The protocol effectively addresses the credibility and single point of failure problems of centralized CAs in the traditional model. Through analysis, our scheme can effectively perform user registration and membership authentication instead of CAs. The security and correctness of the protocol was also analyzed using the formal protocol analysis tool ProVerif and the Ck model. The key authentication protocol we proposed can resist a variety of attacks, and the computational time consumption and Communication costs are relatively low.

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Smart Contracts: Terminology, Technical Limitations and Real World Complexity

Cited by 39 publications

References 3 publications

Is Blockchain a Silver Bullet for Supply Chain Management? Technical Challenges and Research Opportunities

Is Blockchain a Silver Bullet for Supply Chain Management? Technical Challenges and Research Opportunities

On Smart Contracts and Organisational Performance: A Review of Smart Contracts through the Blockchain Technology

A decentralized lightweight authentication protocol under blockchain

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