Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Is Solidity Solid Enough?

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 11599))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

We introduce Featherweight Solidity, a calculus formalizing the core features of the Solidity language, thus providing a fundamental step to reason about safety properties of smart contracts’ source code. The formalization includes a static type system that represents the foundation of the Solidity compiler. We show that it prevents some errors whereas many others, such as accesses to a non existing function or state variable, are only detected at runtime and cause interruption and rolling-back of transactions. We then propose a refinement of the type system that is retro-compatible with original Solidity code, and statically captures more errors, such as unsafe casts and unsafe call-back expressions.

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

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    In the examples, we use additional constructs, such as loops, booleans and key-value mappings (for the standard formalization see [6]).

  2. 2.

    In some cases Solidity tries to convert values from the provided to the expected type, but no documentation about the precise behavior is available.

References

  1. Solidity. https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/index.html. Release 0.4.25

  2. Alt, L., Reitwiessner, C.: SMT-based verification of solidity smart contracts. In: Margaria, T., Steffen, B. (eds.) ISoLA 2018. LNCS, vol. 11247, pp. 376–388. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03427-6_28

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Amani, S., Bégel, M., Bortin, M., Staples, M.: Towards verifying Ethereum smart contract bytecode in Isabelle/HOL. In: Certified Programs and Proofs, pp. 66–77. ACM (2018)

    Google Scholar 

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

    Google Scholar 

  5. Buterin, V.: A next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform (white paper). Technical report (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Di Pirro, M.: How solid is Solidity? An in-dept study of solidity’s type safety. Master’s thesis, Università di Padova, September 2018. http://tesi.cab.unipd.it/61297/

  7. Grishchenko, I., Maffei, M., Schneidewind, C.: A semantic framework for the security analysis of Ethereum smart contracts. In: Bauer, L., Küsters, R. (eds.) POST 2018. LNCS, vol. 10804, pp. 243–269. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89722-6_10

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Hildenbrandt, E., et al.: KEVM: a complete formal semantics of the Ethereum virtual machine. In: Computer Security Foundations Symposium, CSF, pp. 204–217 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Igarashi, A., Pierce, B.C., Wadler, P.: Featherweight Java: a minimal core calculus for Java and GJ. ACM TOPLAS 23(3), 396–450 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kalra, S., Goel, S., Dhawan, M., Sharma, S.: ZEUS: analyzing safety of smart contracts. In: Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Lattner, C., Adve, V.: LLVM: a compilation framework for lifelong program analysis & transformation. In: Code generation and optimization: feedback-directed and runtime optimization, p. 75. IEEE (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Shishkin, E.: Debugging smart contract’s business logic using symbolic model-checking. arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.00619 (2018)

  13. Tikhomirov, S., Voskresenskaya, E., Ivanitskiy, I., Takhaviev, R., Marchenko, E., Alexandrov, Y.: SmartCheck: static analysis of Ethereum smart contracts. In: Workshop on Emerging Trends in Software Engineering for Blockchain, pp. 9–16 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

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

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Silvia Crafa & Matteo Di Pirro

  2. DIBRIS, University of Genova, Genoa, Italy

    Elena Zucca

Authors
  1. Silvia Crafa
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Matteo Di Pirro
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Elena Zucca
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Silvia Crafa .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Stirling University, Stirling, UK

    Andrea Bracciali

  2. Concordia University, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Jeremy Clark

  3. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Federico Pintore

  4. University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

    Peter B. Rønne

  5. University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Massimiliano Sala

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 International Financial Cryptography Association

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Crafa, S., Di Pirro, M., Zucca, E. (2020). Is Solidity Solid Enough?. In: Bracciali, A., Clark, J., Pintore, F., Rønne, P., Sala, M. (eds) Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11599. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43725-1_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43725-1_11

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-43724-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-43725-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation