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Ethereum: State of Knowledge and Research Perspectives

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Foundations and Practice of Security (FPS 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 10723))

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Abstract

Ethereum is a major blockchain-based platform for smart contracts – Turing complete programs that are executed in a decentralized network and usually manipulate digital units of value. A peer-to-peer network of mutually distrusting nodes maintains a common view of the global state and executes code upon request. The stated is stored in a blockchain secured by a proof-of-work consensus mechanism similar to that in Bitcoin. The core value proposition of Ethereum is a full-featured programming language suitable for implementing complex business logic.

Decentralized applications without a trusted third party are appealing in areas like crowdfunding, financial services, identity management, and gambling. Smart contracts are a challenging research topic that spans over areas ranging from cryptography, consensus algorithms, and programming languages to governance, finance, and law.

This paper summarizes the state of knowledge in this field. We provide a technical overview of Ethereum, outline open challenges, and review proposed solutions. We also mention alternative smart contract blockchains.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Smallest denomination of ether: 1 ether = \(10^{18}\) wei.

  2. 2.

    Addresses are usually written in hex with a 0x prefix.

  3. 3.

    See [ato16] for a visual interpretation of the block structure in Ethereum.

  4. 4.

    In June 2016, an unknown hacker exploited a vulnerability in the DAO code and withdrew around $50 million, leading to a controversial [ETC16] hard fork.

  5. 5.

    See [May16] for a study of ECDSA security in Bitcoin and Ethereum.

  6. 6.

    Though Keccak256 is the winning proposal in the SHA3 competition, it differs from the officially standardized SHA3. SHA3 in the Ethereum documentation and source code refers to Keccak256.

  7. 7.

    Ethash is also referred to as Dagger-Hashimoto. Official documentation [Eth17a] states that Ethash “is the latest version of Dagger-Hashimoto, although it can no longer appropriately be called that since many of the original features of both algorithms have been drastically changed”.

  8. 8.

    A commonly used term “51% attack” is not precisely correct: “51%” here means “strictly greater than 50%”.

  9. 9.

    Interestingly, the reference Bitcoin implementation uses checkpoints to skip validation of very old blocks for efficiency, effectively providing finality for transactions older than the latest checkpoint [Bit16].

  10. 10.

    Except those using dedicated privacy-preserving cryptographic techniques, e.g., Dash, Monero, Zcash.

  11. 11.

    Decompiling bytecode to source code is hardly possible as the information about function and variable names is lost during compilation; nevertheless it is possible to display bytecode as a sequence of mnemonics or convert it into an intermediate higher-level representation suitable for analysis.

  12. 12.

    This bug led to the DAO hack of 2016.

  13. 13.

    A technical response to this issue could be updateable contracts: users communicate with a proxy contract, which redirects their transactions to the latest version of the main contract. Such scheme assumes that the developers are honest and competent so that the latest update does not run away with everyone’s money.

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  1. SnT, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

    Sergei Tikhomirov

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  1. University of Lorraine, Villers-lès-Nancy, France

    Abdessamad Imine

  2. Polytechnique de Montréal, Montreal, Québec, Canada

    José M. Fernandez

  3. LORIA, Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, France

    Jean-Yves Marion

  4. Université du Québec en Outaouais, Gatineau, Québec, Canada

    Luigi Logrippo

  5. Télécom SudParis, Evry Cedex, France

    Joaquin Garcia-Alfaro

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Tikhomirov, S. (2018). Ethereum: State of Knowledge and Research Perspectives. In: Imine, A., Fernandez, J., Marion, JY., Logrippo, L., Garcia-Alfaro, J. (eds) Foundations and Practice of Security. FPS 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10723. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75650-9_14

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