A Behavior-Aware Profiling of Smart Contracts

Xuetao Wei, Can Lu, Fatma Rana Ozcan, Ting Chen, Boyang Wang, Di Wu, Qiang Tang

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

The inception of blockchain techniques has been revolutionizing various domains, e.g., Internet of Things, supply chain and healthcare. Ethereum smart contracts emerge as the promising blockchain application, which could enable distrustful parties to participate in the automatic and trustful transactions. Given the increasing importance of Ethereum smart contracts, understanding them becomes imperative. However, prior work only studied smart contracts with general high-level patterns, and one critical question has not been answered yet: how do smart contracts behave individually? In this paper, we present a behavior-aware profiling of individual smart contract from a multi-party perspective, which improves the visibility of the smart contract ecosystem. We conduct a detailed study of the behavior of individual smart contract on two real-world datasets, and our profiling reveals interesting and surprising observations. For example, a few contract completion chains have more than 50 contracts and all of them belong to the Finance category. We also discuss the implications that lead to recommendations to improve the security and performance of the smart contract ecosystem. Overall, our work effectively complements previous work towards generating a comprehensive understanding of smart contracts.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSecurity and Privacy in Communication Networks - 15th EAI International Conference, SecureComm 2019, Proceedings
EditorsSongqing Chen, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Xinwen Fu, Wenjing Lou, Aziz Mohaisen
PublisherSpringer
Pages245-258
Number of pages14
ISBN (Print)9783030372309
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019
Event15th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2019 - Orlando , United States
Duration: Oct 23 2019Oct 25 2019

Publication series

NameLecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST
Volume305 LNICST
ISSN (Print)1867-8211

Conference

Conference15th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityOrlando
Period10/23/1910/25/19

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications

Keywords

  • Behavior
  • Profiling
  • Smart contracts

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