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The blockchain technology has been used for recording state transitions of smart contracts - decentralized applications that can be invoked through external transactions. Smart contracts gained popularity and accrued hundreds of billions of…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-05-10 Nikolay Ivanov , Chenning Li , Qiben Yan , Zhiyuan Sun , Zhichao Cao , Xiapu Luo

Smart contracts are regarded as one of the most promising and appealing notions in blockchain technology. Their self-enforcing and event-driven features make some online activities possible without a trusted third party. Nevertheless,…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-02-16 Bin Hu , Zongyang Zhang , Jianwei Liu , Yizhong Liu , Jiayuan Yin , Rongxing Lu , Xiaodong Lin

The widespread lack of broad source code verification on blockchain explorers such as Etherscan, where despite 78,047,845 smart contracts deployed on Ethereum (as of May 26, 2025), a mere 767,520 (< 1%) are open source, presents a severe…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-06-25 Isaac David , Liyi Zhou , Dawn Song , Arthur Gervais , Kaihua Qin

With the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, smart contracts have become a prominent feature in developing decentralized applications. However, these smart contracts are susceptible to vulnerabilities that…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-08-22 Jiachi Chen , Mingyuan Huang , Zewei Lin , Peilin Zheng , Zibin Zheng

In Ethereum, the practice of verifying the validity of the passed addresses is a common practice, which is a crucial step to ensure the secure execution of smart contracts. Vulnerabilities in the process of address verification can lead to…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-06-03 Tianle Sun , Ningyu He , Jiang Xiao , Yinliang Yue , Xiapu Luo , Haoyu Wang

Smart contracts are appealing because they are self-executing business agreements between parties with the predefined and immutable obligations and rights. However, as with all software, smart contracts may contain vulnerabilities because…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-12-10 Weifeng Xu , Glenn A. Fink

Smart contracts are programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met. However, designing and implementing a smart contract is not trivial since upon deployment on a blockchain, it is no longer possible to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-12-08 Chaïmaa Benabbou , Önder Gürcan

Smart contracts are small programs that run autonomously on the blockchain, using it as their persistent memory. The predominant platform for smart contracts is the Ethereum VM (EVM). In EVM smart contracts, a problem with significant…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Sifis Lagouvardos , Yannis Bollanos , Michael Debono , Neville Grech , Yannis Smaragdakis

With the advent of blockchain technologies, the idea of decentralized applications has gained traction. Smart contracts permit the implementation of application logic to foster distributed systems that are capable of removing…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-02-12 Martin Westerkamp

In recent years, manifold blockchain protocols have been proposed by researchers and industrial companies alike. This has led to a very heterogeneous blockchain landscape. Accordingly, it would be desirable if blockchains could interact…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-06-29 Markus Nissl , Emanuel Sallinger , Stefan Schulte , Michael Borkowski

Smart Contracts are programs running logic in the Blockchain network by executing operations through immutable transactions. The Blockchain network validates such transactions, storing them into sequential blocks of which integrity is…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-03-13 Francesco Salzano , Simone Scalabrino , Rocco Oliveto , Remo Pareschi

As the Ethereum platform continues to mature and gain widespread usage, it is crucial to maintain high standards of smart contract writing practices. While bad practices in smart contracts may not directly lead to security issues, they…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Xiaoqi Li , Zongwei Li , Wenkai Li , Yuqing Zhang , Xin Wang

Blockchain technology (BT) Ethereum Smart Contracts allows programmable transactions that involve the transfer of monetary assets among peers on a BT network independent of a central authorizing agency. Ethereum Smart Contracts are programs…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-05-21 Noama Fatima Samreen , Manar H. Alalfi

In this work, we provide a comprehensive survey of smart contract upgradability patterns using proxies. A primary characteristic of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain is that they are immutable once implemented, no changes can be…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-04-10 Sajad Meisami , William Edward Bodell

Smart contracts are programs running on a blockchain. They are immutable to change, and hence can not be patched for bugs once deployed. Thus it is critical to ensure they are bug-free and well-designed before deployment. A Contract defect…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-04-20 Jiachi Chen , Xin Xia , David Lo , John Grundy , Daniel Xiapu Luo , Ting Chen

Smart contracts on public blockchains now manage large amounts of value, and vulnerabilities in these systems can lead to substantial losses. As AI agents become more capable at reading, writing, and running code, it is natural to ask how…

Software development is a very broad activity that captures the entire life cycle of a software, which includes designing, programming, maintenance and so on. In this study, we focus on the maintenance-related concerns of the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-08-18 Jiachi Chen , Xin Xia , David Lo , John Grundy , Xiaohu Yang

We reveal six zero-day social engineering attacks in Ethereum, and subdivide them into two classes: Address Manipulation and Homograph. We demonstrate the attacks by embedding them in source codes of five popular smart contracts with…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-09-20 Nikolay Ivanov , Qiben Yan

Many Ethereum smart contracts rely on block attributes such as block.timestamp or blockhash to generate random numbers for applications like lotteries and games. However, these values are predictable and miner-manipulable, creating the Bad…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-01-16 Hadis Rezaei , Rahim Taheri , Francesco Palmieri

The Ethereum blockchain platform supports the execution of decentralised applications or smart contracts. These typically hold and transfer digital currency to other parties on the platform; however, they have been subject to numerous…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2019-04-16 Franklin Schrans , Daniel Hails , Alexander Harkness , Sophia Drossopoulou , Susan Eisenbach