Component adaptation is widely recognised to be one of the crucial problems in Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE). We present a formal methodology for adapting components with mismatching interaction behaviour. The three main ingredients of the methodology are: (1) The inclusion of behaviour specifications in component interfaces, (2) a simple, high-level notation for expressing adaptor specifications, and (3) a fully automated procedure to derive concrete adaptors from given high-level specifications.
Smart Contracts have gained tremendous popularity in the past few years, to the point that billions of US Dollars are currently exchanged every day through such technology. However, since the release of the Frontier network of Ethereum in 2015, there have been many cases in which the execution of Smart Contracts managing Ether coins has led to problems or conflicts. Compared to traditional Software Engineering, a discipline of Smart Contract and Blockchain programming, with standardized best practices that can help solve the mentioned problems and conflicts, is not yet sufficiently developed. Furthermore, Smart Contracts rely on a non-standard software life-cycle, according to which, for instance, delivered applications can hardly be updated or bugs resolved by releasing a new version of the software. In this paper we advocate the need for a discipline of Blockchain Software Engineering, addressing the issues posed by smart contract programming and other applications running on blockchains. We analyse a case of study where a bug discovered in a Smart Contract library, and perhaps "unsafe" programming, allowed an attack on Parity, a wallet application, causing the freezing of about 500K Ethers (about 150M USD, in November 2017). In this study we analyze the source code of Parity and the library, and discuss how recognised best practices could mitigate, if adopted and adapted, such detrimental software misbehavior. We also reflect on the specificity of Smart Contract software development, which makes some of the existing approaches insufficient, and call for the definition of a specific Blockchain Software Engineering.
Abstract. Decentralised smart contracts represent the next step in the development of protocols that support the interaction of independent players without the presence of a coercing authority. Based on protocols a la BitCoin for digital currencies, smart contracts are believed to be a potentially enabling technology for a wealth of future applications. The validation of such an early developing technology is as necessary as it is complex. In this paper we combine game theory and formal models to tackle the new challenges posed by the validation of such systems.
Modern cryptocurrencies exploit decentralised blockchains to record a public and unalterable history of transactions. Besides transactions, further information is stored for different, and often undisclosed, purposes, making the blockchains a rich and increasingly growing source of valuable information, in part of difficult interpretation. Many data analytics have been developed, mostly based on specifically designed and ad-hoc engineered approaches. We propose a general-purpose framework, seamlessly supporting data analytics on both Bitcoin and Ethereumcurrently the two most prominent cryptocurrencies. Such a framework allows us to integrate relevant blockchain data with data from other sources, and to organise them in a database, either SQL or NoSQL. Our framework is released as an open-source Scala library. We illustrate the distinguishing features of our approach on a set of significant use cases, which allow us to empirically compare ours to other competing proposals, and evaluate the impact of the database choice on scalability.
A smart contract enforces specific performance on anonymous users without centralization. It facilitates payment equity in commerce by providing irreversible transactions. Smart contracts are also used for illegal activities such as money laundering and ransomware. Such contracts include criminal smart contracts (CSCs), proposed in CCS'16, that can be efficiently implemented in
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