Abstract
Decentralised smart contracts represent the next step in the development of protocols that support the interaction of independent players without the presence of a coercing authority. Based on protocols à la BitCoin for digital currencies, smart contracts are believed to be a potentially enabling technology for a wealth of future applications. The validation of such an early developing technology is as necessary as it is complex. In this paper we combine game theory and formal models to tackle the new challenges posed by the validation of such systems.
Authors would like to thank David Zimbeck for useful discussions and for sharing information about BitHalo.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This name is believed to be a pseudonym.
- 2.
We stick to a quite simple vision of trading. An interesting alternative would be assuming that \(v < p\) for the seller and \(p < v\) for the buyer. In this case both would have an incentive to come to the shared consent, both increasing their wealth. The wealth preservation property would not hold. This is scope for future work.
- 3.
It must be recalled that larger probabilities could hold for lesser-percentage losses, e.g. the seller could have a 0.1 probability of a 20 %. Probabilities for different losses can be determined, if of interest.
References
Antonopoulos, A.: Mastering Bitcoin. O’Relly, San Francisco (2015)
Back, A.: Hashcash a denial of service counter-measure (2002). http://www.hashcash.org/papers/hashcash.pdf
Bartoletti, M., Cimoli, T., Zunino, R.: Compliance in behavioural contracts: a brief survey. In: Bodei, C., Ferrari, G.-L., Priami, C. (eds.) Programming Languages with Applications to Biology and Security - Colloquium in Honour of Pierpaolo Degano for his 65th Birthday. LNCS. Springer (2015) (to appear)
Bartoletti, M., Scalas, A., Tuosto, E., Zunino, R.: Honesty by typing. In: Beyer, D., Boreale, M. (eds.) FORTE 2013 and FMOODS 2013. LNCS, vol. 7892, pp. 305–320. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Basile, D., Degano, P., Ferrari, G.-L.: Automata for analysing service contracts. In: Maffei, M., Tuosto, E. (eds.) TGC 2014. LNCS, vol. 8902, pp. 34–50. Springer, Heidelberg (2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45917-1_3
Basile, D., Degano, P., Ferrari, G.L.: A formal framework for secure and complying services. J. Supercomput. 69(1), 43–52 (2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11227-014-1211-0
BitHalo: https://bithalo.org/
Bianco, A., de Alfaro, L.: Model checking of probabilistic and nondeterministic systems. In: Thiagarajan, P.S. (ed.) FSTTCS 1995. LNCS, vol. 1026, pp. 499–513. Springer, Heidelberg (1995)
BitcoinWiki: Atomic trading. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/atomic_cross-chain_trading
BitcoinWiki: Script. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/script
BitcoinWiki: Smart property. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Smart_Property
Blockchain.info: Average transaction confirmation time. https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time
Dai, W.: b-money (1998). http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt
Dolev, D., Yao, A.: On the security of public key protocols. IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 29(2), 198–208 (1983)
Forejt, V., Kwiatkowska, M., Norman, G., Parker, D.: Automated verification techniques for probabilistic systems. In: Bernardo, M., Issarny, V. (eds.) SFM 2011. LNCS, vol. 6659, pp. 53–113. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Hansson, H., Jonsson, B.: A logic for reasoning about time and reliability. Formal Aspects Comput. 6(5), 512–535 (1994)
Kwiatkowska, M., Norman, G., Parker, D.: PRISM 4.0: verification of probabilistic real-time systems. In: Gopalakrishnan, G., Qadeer, S. (eds.) CAV 2011. LNCS, vol. 6806, pp. 585–591. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Lawsky, B.M.: Bitlicense. http://www.dfs.ny.gov/legal/regulations/adoptions/dfsp200t.pdf
Lowe, G.: An attack on the Needham-Schroeder public-key authentication protocol. Inf. Process. Lett. 56(3), 131–133 (1995)
Malinowski, D., Mazurek, L., Andrychowicz, M., Dziembowski, S.: Secure multiparty computations on bitcoin. IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, p. 784 (2013)
Muthoo, A.: Bargaining Theory with Applications. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1999)
Nakamoto, S.: Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system (2008). https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Needham, R., Schroeder, M.: Using encryption for authentication in large networks of computers. Commun. ACM 21(12), 993–999 (1978)
Osborne, M.J., Rubinstein, A.: A Course in Game Theory. MIT Press, Cambridge (1994)
de Soto, H.P.: The property rights project. http://www.ild.org.pe
Szabo, N.: Formalizing and securing relationships on public networks. First Monday (1997). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/548/469
Szabo, N.: The idea of smart contracts (1997). http://szabo.best.vwh.net/smart_contracts_idea.html
VV.AA: Special report bitcoin. Bloomberg Briefs (2015). http://www.bloombergbriefs.com/
Zimbeck, D.: Two party double deposit trustless escrow in cryptographic networks and bitcoin (2014). https://bithalo.org/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bigi, G., Bracciali, A., Meacci, G., Tuosto, E. (2015). Validation of Decentralised Smart Contracts Through Game Theory and Formal Methods. In: Bodei, C., Ferrari, G., Priami, C. (eds) Programming Languages with Applications to Biology and Security. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9465. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25527-9_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25527-9_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25526-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25527-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)