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AspectSol: A Solidity Aspect-Oriented Programming Tool with Applications in Runtime Verification

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Runtime Verification (RV 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13498))

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Abstract

Aspect-oriented programming tools aim to provide increased code modularity by enabling programming of cross-cutting concerns separate from the main body of code. Since the inception of runtime verification, aspect-oriented programming has regularly been touted as a perfect accompanying tool, by allowing for non-invasive monitoring instrumentation techniques. In this paper we present, AspectSol, which enables aspect-oriented programming for smart contracts written in Solidity, and then discuss the design space for pointcuts and aspects in this context. We present and evaluate practical runtime verification uses and applications of the tool.

This research has received funding from the ERC consolidator grant D-SynMA (No. 772459) and the University of Malta Research Awards project “Systematising Smart Contracts within Classical Contract Law Theory”, and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development project “VinoVeritas: An Authority to Consumer Wine Audit Solution”.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The notion of gas as a resource to be paid for to execute code is the most common way thorough which public blockchains motivate miners (the nodes in the decentralised network which process transactions and record them on the blockchain) to execute and record execution of smart contract code.

  2. 2.

    In practice, we would also need to do this for the send function.

  3. 3.

    Ether is the native cryptocurrency used in Ethereum.

  4. 4.

    The full code of the example can be found in the tool repository.

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Joshua Ellul & Gordon J. Pace

  2. University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Shaun Azzopardi

  3. Hash Data, George Town, Cayman Islands

    Ryan Falzon

Authors
  1. Shaun Azzopardi
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  2. Joshua Ellul
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  3. Ryan Falzon
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  4. Gordon J. Pace
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gordon J. Pace .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS/Verimag, Saint Martin d’Hères, France

    Thao Dang

  2. Høgskulen på Vestlandet, Bergen, Norway

    Volker Stolz

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Azzopardi, S., Ellul, J., Falzon, R., Pace, G.J. (2022). AspectSol: A Solidity Aspect-Oriented Programming Tool with Applications in Runtime Verification. In: Dang, T., Stolz, V. (eds) Runtime Verification. RV 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13498. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17196-3_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17196-3_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-17195-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-17196-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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