Skip to main content

A Modeling and Verification Framework for Ethereum Smart Contracts

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Rigorous State-Based Methods (ABZ 2024)

Abstract

Blockchain has shown to be a versatile technology with applications ranging from financial services and supply chain management to healthcare, identity verification, etc. Thanks to the usage of smart contracts, blockchain can streamline and automate complex processes, eliminating the need for intermediaries and reducing administrative overhead. Smart contracts often handle valuable assets and execute critical functions, making them attractive targets for attackers. Thus, secure and reliable smart contracts are necessary.

The long-term research we present aims to face the problem of safety and security assurance of smart contracts at design time. We are investigating the usage of the Abstract State Machine (ASM) formal method for the specification, validation, and verification of Ethereum smart contracts. We provide (i) a set of ASM libraries that simplify smart contracts modeling, (ii) models of malicious contracts to be used to check the robustness of a contract against some given attacks, (iii) patterns of properties to be checked to guarantee the operational correctness of the contract and its adherence to certain predefined properties.

This work was partially supported by project SERICS (PE00000014) under the MUR National Recovery and Resilience Plan funded by the European Union - NextGenerationEU.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/smart-contract-verification/ethereum-via-asm.

References

  1. Certora Technology White Paper. https://docs.certora.com/en/latest/docs/white-paper/index.html. Accessed 20 Feb 2024

  2. Alchemy, N.: A short history of smart contract hacks on Ethereum: A.k.a. why you need a smart contract security audit (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Arcaini, P., Gargantini, A., Riccobene, E., Scandurra, P.: A model-driven process for engineering a toolset for a formal method. Softw.: Pract. Exp. 41(2), 155–166 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.1019

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Atzei, N., Bartoletti, M., Cimoli, T.: A survey of attacks on ethereum smart contracts (SoK). In: Maffei, M., Ryan, M. (eds.) POST 2017. LNCS, vol. 10204, pp. 164–186. Springer, Heidelberg (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54455-6_8

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Bhargavan, K., et al.: Formal verification of smart contracts: short paper. In: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM workshop on Programming Languages and Analysis for Security, pp. 91–96 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Börger, E., Raschke, A.: Modeling Companion for Software Practitioners. Springer, Heidelberg (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56641-1

    Book  Google Scholar 

  7. Börger, E., Stärk, R.: Abstract State Machines: A Method for High-Level System Design and Analysis. Springer, Heidelberg (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18216-7

    Book  Google Scholar 

  8. Braghin, C., Riccobene, E., Valentini, S.: State-based modeling and verification of smart contracts. In: 39th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing (2024, accepted)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Foundation, E.: Ethereum (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Luu, L., Chu, D.H., Olickel, H., Saxena, P., Hobor, A.: Making smart contracts smarter. In: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp. 254–269 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Madl, G., Bathen, L., Flores, G., Jadav, D.: Formal verification of smart contracts using interface automata. In: IEEE International Conference on Blockchain, pp. 556–563 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Mavridou, A., Laszka, A.: Designing secure ethereum smart contracts: a finite state machine based approach. In: Meiklejohn, S., Sako, K. (eds.) FC 2018. LNCS, vol. 10957, pp. 523–540. Springer, Heidelberg (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-58387-6_28

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Wood, G., et al.: Ethereum: a secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger. Ethereum Proj. Yellow Pap. 151(2014), 1–32 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chiara Braghin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Ethics declarations

Competing Interests

The author(s) has no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this manuscript.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Valentini, S., Braghin, C., Riccobene, E. (2024). A Modeling and Verification Framework for Ethereum Smart Contracts. In: Bonfanti, S., Gargantini, A., Leuschel, M., Riccobene, E., Scandurra, P. (eds) Rigorous State-Based Methods. ABZ 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14759. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-63790-2_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-63790-2_13

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-63789-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-63790-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics