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A Formal Modeling Language for Smart Contracts

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Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 15280))

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Abstract

Smart contracts codify real-world transactions and automatically execute the terms of the contract when predefined conditions are met. This paper proposes SmartML, a modeling language for smart contracts that is platform independent and easy to comprehend.  We detail its formal semantics and type system with a focus on its role in addressing security vulnerabilities. We show along a case study, how SmartML prevents reentrancy attacks, illustrating its efficacy in reinforcing the reliability and security of smart contracts within decentralized systems.

This work is funded by the ATHENE project “Model-centric Deductive Verification of Smart Contracts”.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    State variables in Solidity terminology.

  2. 2.

    As a contract might be associated with multiple locations, by a slight abuse of notation we identify \(\langle \mathcal {S}(v),m_v\rangle \) with \({\langle \kappa _1,m_v\rangle ,\ldots ,\langle \kappa _n,m_v\rangle }\), where \(\mathcal {S}(v) = \{\kappa _1,\ldots ,\kappa _n\)}.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Adele Veschetti, Richard Bubel & Reiner Hähnle

Authors
  1. Adele Veschetti
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  2. Richard Bubel
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  3. Reiner Hähnle
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Correspondence to Adele Veschetti .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Campus Gualtar, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    Alexandre Madeira

  2. University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

    Alexander Knapp

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Veschetti, A., Bubel, R., Hähnle, R. (2025). A Formal Modeling Language for Smart Contracts. In: Madeira, A., Knapp, A. (eds) Software Engineering and Formal Methods. SEFM 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15280. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-77382-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-77382-2_6

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