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solc-verify: A Modular Verifier for Solidity Smart Contracts

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Verified Software. Theories, Tools, and Experiments (VSTTE 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 12031))

Abstract

We present solc-verify, a source-level verification tool for Ethereum smart contracts. solc-verify takes smart contracts written in Solidity and discharges verification conditions using modular program analysis and SMT solvers. Built on top of the Solidity compiler, solc-verify reasons at the level of the contract source code, as opposed to the more common approaches that operate at the level of Ethereum bytecode. This enables solc-verify to effectively reason about high-level contract properties while modeling low-level language semantics precisely. The properties, such as contract invariants, loop invariants, and function pre- and post-conditions, can be provided as annotations in the code by the developer. This enables automated, yet user-friendly formal verification for smart contracts. We demonstrate solc-verify by examining real-world examples where our tool can effectively find bugs and prove correctness of non-trivial properties with minimal user effort.

Á. Hajdu—The author was also affiliated with SRI International as an intern during this project.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/SRI-CSL/solidity.

  2. 2.

    Due to the usage of gas, total and partial correctness are equivalent. Furthermore, currently we do not model gas: running out of gas does not affect correctness as the transaction is reverted. However, we might model it in the future in order to verify liveness properties or to be able to specify an upper bound.

  3. 3.

    The paper and the experiments are based on compiler version v0.4.25, but we keep solc-verify up to date with the latest development branch.

  4. 4.

    We might model events in the future to be able to specify that an event is expected to be triggered.

  5. 5.

    Gas costs of certain write operations were about to change with Constantinople, allowing a reentrancy attack, but it was reverted with the St. Petersburg upgrade [19].

  6. 6.

    Contract invariants are also checked before external calls as they can perform a callback to the contract.

  7. 7.

    http://csl.sri.com/users/dejan/contracts.tar.gz.

  8. 8.

    For discussion, see https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-solidity/issues/1120.

  9. 9.

    With bit-size of 16 bits, z3 can discharge the VCs in 2295 s while other solvers do not terminate.

  10. 10.

    We could only obtain a spreadsheet of results from the authors.

  11. 11.

    For an example of the difficulties in manually analyzing even trivial issues, see https://runtimeverification.com/blog/erc-20-verification/.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary

    Ákos Hajdu

  2. SRI International, New York City, USA

    Dejan Jovanović

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  1. Ákos Hajdu
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Correspondence to Ákos Hajdu .

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  1. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Supratik Chakraborty

  2. SRI International, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Jorge A. Navas

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Hajdu, Á., Jovanović, D. (2020). solc-verify: A Modular Verifier for Solidity Smart Contracts. In: Chakraborty, S., Navas, J. (eds) Verified Software. Theories, Tools, and Experiments. VSTTE 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12031. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41600-3_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41600-3_11

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