An application layer with protocol-based java smart contract verification

Abstract

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Smart contracts are software that runs in blockchain and expresses the rules of an agreement between parties. An incorrect smart contract might allow blockchain users to violate its rules and even jeopardize its expected security. Smart contracts cannot be easily replaced to patch a bug since the nature of contracts requires them to be immutable. More problems occur when a smart contract is written in a general-purpose language, such as Java, whose executions, in a blockchain, could hang the network, break consensus or violate data encapsulation. To limit these problems, there exist automatic static analyzers that find bugs before smart contracts are installed in the blockchain. This so-called off-chain verification is optional because programmers are not forced to use it. This paper presents a general framework for the verification of smart contracts, instead, that is part of the protocol of the nodes and applies when the code of the smart contracts gets installed. It is a mandatory entry filter that bans code that does not abide by the verification rules. Consequently, such rules become part of the consensus rules of the blockchain. Therefore, an improvement in the verification protocol entails a consensus update of the network. This paper describes an implementation of a smart contracts application layer with protocol-based verification for smart contracts written in the Takamaka subset of Java, that filters only those smart contracts whose execution in blockchain is not dangerous. This application layer runs on top of a consensus engine such as Tendermint and its derivatives Ignite and CometBFT (proof of stake), or Mokamint (proof of space). This paper provides examples of actual implementations of verification rules that check if the smart contracts satisfy some constraints required by the Takamaka language. This paper shows that protocol-based verification works and reports how consensus updates are implemented. It shows actual experiments as well as limits to its use, mainly related to the fact that protocol-based verification must be fast and its complexity must never explode, or otherwise, it would compromise the performance of the blockchain network.

Keywords

• smart contract
• software verification
• program analysis
• blockchain
• distributed ledger technology
• Tendermint