A gentle introduction to the Blockchain and Smart Contracts

A gentle introduction to the
Blockchain and Smart contracts
Giovanni Ciatto { giovanni.ciatto@unibo.it }
Talk @ Autonomous Systems Course, A.Y. 17/18
Dipartimento di Informatica, Scienza e Ingegneria—Universit`a di Bologna
May 30, 2018
Ciatto G. (Autonomous Systems) Introduction to BC and Smart contracts May 30, 2018 1 / 79

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my supervisor Prof. Andrea Omicini, and my colleagues
Prof. Enrico Denti, Dr. Stefano Mariani, and Dr. Roberta Calegari for the
many fruitful discussions which I tried to synthesise in these slides.
— G. Ciatto

Talk Outline
1 State Machine Replication
2 The blockchain’s main elements
3 Smart contracts
4 Research perspectives

State Machine Replication Overview
State Machine Replication (SMR) [24, 10]
Main idea
Executing the same (not necessarily ﬁnite) state machinea over multiple
independent (possibly distributed) processors, in parallel, in order to
achieve:
fault tolerance (to stops, crashes, lies, bugs, etc)
availability and reactivity
data / software replication & untamperability
a
State machine ≈ program
A network of replicas
When distributed, we say the processors constitute a peer-to-peer (P2P)
network of replicas, all exposing the same observable behaviour
! no assumption about the topology

State Machine Replication Overview
State Machine Replication (SMR)

State Machine Replication Deterministic computations
Deterministic stateless computations
Input −→ Computation −→ Output
The computation is deterministic if it always produces the same output
when it is performed on the same input.
Can be arbitrarily replicated
Replicas can be run in parallel
Deterministic
class Calculator {
int sum(int x, int y) {
return x + y;
}
}
Non-deterministic
class Lottery {
int extract(int max) {
Random fate = new Random ();
return fate.nextInt(max);
}
}

Deterministic stateful computations I
(Input, State) −→ Computation −→ (Output, State )
The computation is deterministic if it always produces the same output
when it is performed on the same input and state.
Can be arbitrarily replicated & replicas run in parallel
All replicas must be initialised within the same initial state
All inputs must be submitted to all replicas in the same order1
They all move through the same sequence of states
Maintaining the consistency of the state among on inputs
1
input ≈ method call

Deterministic stateful computations II
Deterministic
class Ledger {
Map <String , Integer > balances = // all accounts to 0
void deposit(String userID , int money) {
balances[userID] += money;
}
boolean transfer(String sender , String receiver , int money) {
if (balances[sender] >= money) {
balances[sender] -= money;
balances[receiver] += money;
return true;
}
return false;
}
}

Deterministic stateful computations III
Non-deterministic
class RaceCondition {
int shared = 0;
Thread t1 = new Thread( () -> shared ++ );
Thread t2 = new Thread( () -> shared -- );
int guess () {
t1.start (); t2.start (); t1.join (); t2.join ();
return shared;
}
}
The Blockchain is essentially a means for replicating deterministic stateful
computations

State Machine Replication Universal SMR
“Universal” State Machine Replication
UTM : TM = Interpreter : Program = ? : SMR
! UTM
def
= Universal Turing Machine — TM
def
= Turing Machine
We can replicate a stateful deterministic program implementing a
particular business logic
! e.g. a bank ledger
In the exact same way, we could replicate a deterministic program
implementing an interpreter
! interpreter ≈ a program which executes other programs
The API of such an interpreter would enable programs to be
deployed, undeployed, invoked, etc.
Smart-contracts-enabled Blockchains essentially act as replicated
“universal” state machines on which smart contracts (SC) can be deployed
! Smart contract ≈ a program deployed on such a machine

State Machine Replication Universal SMR
“Universal” State Machine Replication – Example
class VirtualMachine {
Map <String , Program > processes = // empty
Compiler cc = // ...
void deploy(String pid , String code) {
Program newProgram = cc.compile(code);
processes[pid] += newProgram;
}
Object invoke(String pid , Object [] args) {
Object result = null;
if (processes. containsKey (pid)) {
result = processes[pid]. call(args);
}
return result;
}
}

State Machine Replication SMR and Open Distributed Systems
SMR and Distributed Systems
Messages may be lost, reordered, or duplicated by the network2
each node may perceive a diﬀerent view about the system events
Lack of global time
=⇒ lack of total ordering of events
=⇒ lack of trivial consistency
Consistency, Availability, Partition-resistance (CAP) theorem [7]
=⇒ you cannot have more than two of them
Authentication is required if the replicated service is user-speciﬁc
2
messages ≈ inputs to replicated processes

SMR, Middleware, and Consensus I
Each replica is executed on top of a middleware taking care of validating
& ordering inputs for the replicated program
It is then invoked on all nodes with the same sequence of inputs
The middleware makes nodes participate to a consensus protocol
i.e. a distributed algorithm aimed at selecting the next input
... producing the so-called atomic broadcast
! Fischer, Lynch and Patterson (FLP) theorem [15]
=⇒ impossibility of consensus without timing assuptions

SMR, Middleware, and Consensus II

SMR and Open Distributed Systems
How can we prevent a protocol participant from
lying w.r.t. the protocol rules or exchanged data?
being buggy, therefore breaking the rules or producing wrong data?
crashing?
. . . in general: being byzantine?
Long story short: we can’t.
BUT we can tolerate some byzantine nodes
! Less than 1/3 of the total amount of nodes, according to
Lamport’s Byzantine Generals Problem solution [19]
We can also ease the recognition of prohibited or unauthorised
behaviours by employing cryptography
e.g. Pub/Priv key pairs for user authentications
e.g. 1-Way Hash functions and MAC for data integrity

SMR and Open Distributed Systems
Takeaway
The blockchain is a smart way to achieve (U)SMR, dealing with – i.e.,
mitigating – well known issues of open distributed systems.

The blockchain’s main elements
Disclaimer
Most of Blockchain-related works describe a speciﬁc blockchain technology
(BCT henceforth) using a bottom-up approach. I believe this approach
hinders generality and limits the discussion about what we can do on top
of BCTs. In this section, I try to present the blockchain in a top-down
way, synthesising informations from a number of sources, being [23], [28], [3]
the most prominent ones. Errors and misunderstanding are possible, and in
any case they are my sole responsibility.
The following description of the blockchain architecture and functioning is
strongly inspired to Ethereum3, being the most mature, studied, and
documented smart-contracts-enabled BCT.
— G. Ciatto
3
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper

The blockchain’s main elements Overview
Overview
Blockchain Technology (BCT)
A clever implementation of a SMR system keeping track of which users
own some assets (representations), by means of a replicated ledger
e.g. The Ledger snippet
Smart-contracts-enabled BCT
A clever implementation of a USMR system keeping track of assets
(representations) owned by entities – there including smart-contracts (SC),
i.e. processes, owning code and state –, by means of a replicated ledger
e.g. The VirtualMachine snippet

The blockchain’s main elements Entity identifiers
Entity identifiers
Users
Users are supposed to own (at least) one (Kpub, Kpr ) key pair
They are identified by some function f (Kpub) of their public key
e.g. 1-way-hash functions
e.g. digital certificates issued by some trusted CA
! Identifiers are also known as addresses in this context
Permissioned vs Permissionless
Either each user owns multiple non-intelligible identifiers. . .
Pseudonymity Decentralised × Sybil-attack [12]
. . . or he/she owns a single certified identifier
× Single point of failure/trust
! Smart-contracts-enabled BCTs identify both smart contracts’
instances and users by means of the same sort of addresses

The blockchain’s main elements The world state
The world state I
The system state
SystemState ::= entityID → Account
| SystemState SystemState
The system state conceptually consists of a mapping between entity
identiﬁers and arbitrary account data related to that account

The world state II
The account state
e.g. Account ::= (balance, Storage , Code , Metadata )
The account state conceptually consists of several ﬁelds keeping track of
what a particular entity currently owns. The ﬁelds may vary depending on
The blockchain nature
Whether the entity is a smart contract or a user
e.g. BCTs coming with native cryptocurrencies, usually keep track of
accounts balances (at least)
e.g. Smart-contracts-enabled BCTs, may keep track of their source code
and internal Storage

The world state III
class Ledger {
Map <String , Integer > balances = ...
// ^^^^^^^^
// system state
void deposit(String userID , int money) {
// ^^^^^^
// entity identifier
balances[userID] += ...
// ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
// account state
}
}
Several possible
implementations
Unspent Transaction
Output (UTXO)
e.g. Bitcoin [23]
Account-based
e.g. Ethereum [28]
Key-value store
e.g. Hyperledger
Fabric [3]

The blockchain’s main elements Transactions
Transactions (a.k.a. inputs or messages) I
(Informal) Deﬁnition
Transaction ::= (txID, issuerID, Signature , recipientID, value, Data )
Transactions encode (world) state variations yet to be performed.
txID — the transaction progressive number
issuerID — the address of the transaction issuer entity
Signature — the cryptographic signature of the transaction
recipientID — the address of the transaction recipient entity
value — some non negative amount of cryptocurrency
Data — some arbitrary data

Transactions (a.k.a. inputs or messages) II
Transaction use cases (for smart-contracts-enabled BCTs)
Deployment TX — if recipientID = ∅ ∧ Data = code
Invocation TX — if recipientID = address ∧ Data = whatever
Money transfer TX — if recipientID = ∅ ∧ value > 0 ∧ Data = ε
Transactions life-cycle — part 1
1 A issuer user compiles a transaction
2 He/she signs it with his/her private key Kpr
3 His/her node spreads the transaction over the P2P network
4 Peers only take into account valid transactions
5 . . .

Transactions (a.k.a. inputs or messages) III
Transactions validity
In order for a transaction to avoid being dropped by peers:
it must be well formed
the signature must match the issuer address
the signature must certify the transaction integrity
the issuer’s balance must be ≥ value
! Even once a valid transaction has been spreaded over the network,
there is no guarantee on when it will be executed

The blockchain’s main elements Blocks and block chains
Blocks and block chains I
Block ::= (prevHash, index, time, TxList , FinalState )
TxList ::= ( Transaction , IntermediateState )
| TxList TxList
Blocks are timestamped, hash-linked lists of transactions.
prevHash — the hash of the previous block
index — the index of the current block
time — the timestamp of the current block
TxList — the list of transactions included into the current block
and the intermediate system states they produces
FinalState — the system state resulting from applying all transactions
in TxList , respecting their order

Blocks and block chains II
TXs
hash( )
Index i-1
Timestamp
TXs
hash( )
Index i
Timestamp
TXs
hash( )
Index i+1
Timestamp
Statei-1 Statei Statei+1
Int. States Int. States Int. States
Figure: Graphical representation of the Block-chain from the global p.o.v.

Blocks features
Replication + Hash-chaining Untamperability of the past
Hash-chain + Time + Ordering Timestamping/notary service [16]
Hash-chain + Crypt. signatures
Accountability
Non-repudiation
They are supposed to be published (almost) periodically
! In the general case limn→∞ P[inconsistent(Bi )] = 0, where
Bi is the ith
block
n is the amount of successor blocks of Bi
inconsistent(Bi ) is true if not all nodes agree on the content of Bi

A block’s life I
The genesis block
The very ﬁrst block is assumed to be shared between the initial nodes
Blocks life-cycle — part 1
Each node, periodically:
1 listens for transactions published by other nodes
2 validates, consistency-checks & executes them
3 compiles the new local candidate block
4 participates to the consensus algorithm
i.e. negotiates the next block to be appended to the blockchain
! this phase include a spreading of the block to peers

A block’s life II
Transactions life-cycle — part 2
4 the transaction is validated by peers upon reception
and dropped if invalid
5 each transaction is eventually executed
producing an intermediary state
6 they are both included into some block
7 the block is eventually appended to the blockchain
i.e. a consensus protocol conﬁrms the block
(there including its transactions)
! These life-cycles may vary a lot depending on the speciﬁc
consensus algorithm employed

The network point of view
Transactions
Blocks
Blockchain
Miners
Clients
Figure: Graphical representation of the Block-chain from the network p.o.v.

The blockchain’s main elements Consensus & Mining
Consensus & Mining I
Permission-ed BCTs
Constrain users’ IDs through CAs
⇓
“Classical” quorum/leader-based
consensus algorithms
BFT algorithms
e.g. PBFT [9]
e.g. BFT-SMaRt [26]
e.g. HoneyBadger BFT [22]
Non-BFT algorithms
e.g. Paxos [17]
e.g. Raft [18]
e.g. ZooKeeper, Google Chubby
Permission-less BCTs
Open access to any (Kpub, Kpr )
⇓
“Novel” competition-based
approaches
e.g. Proof-of-Work [6]
e.g. Proof-of-Stake [1]
e.g. Proof-of-Elapsed-Time [11]
e.g. IOTA Tangle [2]
Comparisons & surveys in [5, 8]

Consensus & Mining II
Permission-ed BCTs
“Classical” quorum/leader-based
consensus algorithms
Assumptions on the amount
N of nodes
UB up to ∼ 100 / 1000
High throughput in terms of
TXs/second
OoM ∼ 1000 TXs/s
“Exact” consistency
Ideal for closed multi-
administrative organizations
Permission-less BCTs
“Novel” competition-based
approaches
No assumption on N
UB virtually ∞
Low throughput
OoM ∼ 10 TXs/s
Probabilistic consistency
Ideal for open systems

Proof-of-Work (PoW)
PoW (a.k.a. mining) — the typical approach in cryptocurrencies
Nodes (a.k.a. miners) compete to be the first one to solve a
computational puzzle, once every ∆T seconds
B finding a block hash having a given amount of leading zeros
Ξ hashing (pseudo)random pieced of data attained form the block content
The proof of the effort is easy to verify and included into the block
The block is spreaded on the P2P network
Other miners confirm the novel block by mining on top of it
Forks (i.e. inconsistency) are eventually aborted
B Longest comulative difficulty
Ξ Greedy Heaviest Observed SubTree (GHOST [25])

PoW interesting features
Competition-based, local, eventually-consistent, stochastic approach
Self-adaptive mining diﬃculty, s.t. E[∆T] = const
! the system update frequency is 1/E[∆T]
Only computing power (CP) matters here
Sybil-attack resistant
CP distribution & Majority rule (51% attack) [14]
! Endows the cryptocurrency with its economical value
! Miners require economical compensation for their eﬀort

PoW security
r = adversaryCP
honestsCP
P[n | r] = 1 − n
k=0
(nr)k e−nr
k! (1 − rn−k)
(see [23])
0
0,1
0,2
0,3
0,4
0,5
0,6
0,7
0,8
0,9
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
P(n)-ProbabilitàsuccessoDSA
n - Numero di blocchi
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
In Bitcoin:
nthreshold = 6
≈ 1h since
E[∆T] =
10m
99.999%
secure if
adversaryCP <
13% totalCP

Smart contracts Definition
Smart contracts [27]
Stateful, reactive, user-defined, immutable, and deterministic processes
executing some arbitrary computation on the blockchain, i.e., while being
replicated over the blockchain network
Stateful — they encapsulate their own state, like OOP’s objects
Reactive — they can only be triggered by issuing some invocation TX
User-defined — users can deploy their smart contracts implementing an
arbitrary logic by issuing a deployment TX
Immutable — their source/byte-code cannot be altered after deployment
Arbitrary — they are expressed with a Turing-complete language
Replicated — the blockchain is essentially a replicated interpreter,
employing a consensus protocol to synchronise the many
smart contracts replica

Smart contracts Interesting properties & expectations
Smart contracts interesting features and expectations
Immutability + Untamperable + Accountability + Decentralisation
=⇒ can be trusted in handling ﬁnancial operations between organizations
(even easier with native cryptocurrency)
The code is always right, the true history is on the blokchain
reducing disputes
removing the need for arbitration
Lack of situatedness: totally disembodied [21] data & computation
Like the cloud, but with no single point of control
Killer applications: cryptocurrencies, asset-tracking (e.g. property,
notary, medical-records, etc.), naming systems, ID management,
access control, voting systems, reputation systems, blackboard
systems, Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), etc.

Smart contracts Functioning
Smart contracts deployment
1 Initially there exists no smart contract
i.e., the system state comprehend no smart contract entity
2 A user can instantiate a smart contract by publishing its
source/byte-code within a deployment TX
the TX also initialises the SC state
the protocol assigns an univocal address to the novel SC
3 Once the transaction is conﬁrmed, you can assume the SC instance is
running on all nodes
no such a big eﬀort: it is just listening for invocations

Smart contracts Functioning
Smart contracts invocation
1 A user can trigger an already deployed SC by publishing an invocation
TX
specifying the SC address as recipient
providing some input data specifying the requested computation
2 Eventually, each node will receive the TX and execute it
the SC code usually decides what to do given the provided input data
3 If the computation terminates without exceptions, any produced side
eﬀects (on the SC state) become part of the new intermediate system
state
Otherwise, they are simply dropped, this the new intermediate state
coincides with the previous one
4 The wrapping block is eventually conﬁrmed by the consensus protocol,
and the invoked computation can be actually considered executed

Smart contracts Quasi-Turing-completeness
Issues arising from Turing-completeness
What would be the effect of invoking such a smart-contract?
class Bomb {
int i = 0;
void doSomething () {
while (true) {
i = (i + 1) % 10;
}
}
}
BTCs cannot filter out non-terminating computation since
termination is non-decidable
In open systems, users cannot be assumed to simply well-behave
=⇒ Need to prevent/discourage users from deploying/invoking infinite or
long computations

Smart contracts Quasi-Turing-completeness
Ethereum and Gas
Ethereum proposes gas, i.e., making users pay for computation executions:
TXs are endowed with two more fields: gasLimit & gasPrice
Miners could delay TXs having a low gasPrice
Users can increase their priority by increasing gasPrice
Upon execution, each bytecode instruction increases the g counter
according to a price list defined in [28]
Whenever g > gasLimit an exception is raised, reverting side effects
In any case, upon termination, the issuer balance is decreased of
∆ETH = gasPrice · g
The winning miner can redeem ∆ETH as a compensation for its
computational effort
The economical dimension of computation has to be taken into
account when designing Ethereum smart contracts

Smart contracts Solidity example
Ethereum smart contract example with Solidity4
contract Counter {
event Increased(uint oldValue , address cause);
address owner; uint value;
function Counter () public { owner = msg.sender; } // <-- constructor
function inc(uint times) public { // <-- API
for (uint i = 0; i < times; i++) {
emit Increased(value ++, msg.sender);
}
}
function kill () public { // <-- API
require(msg.sender == owner);
suicide(owner);
}
function () { // <-- fallback
throw;
}
}
4
https://solidity.readthedocs.io

Smart contracts Solidity example
Ethereum smart contract example with Solidity
Dan--- 5.24
hash( )
CounterEve
Alice--- 40
hash( )
BobAlice 20
State 0
Alicebalance
= 20
Bobbalance
= 20
Carl--- 5
hash( )
DanBob 3
"Counter.sol"Alice
State 1
Alicebalance = 20
Bobbalance = 17
Carlbalance = 5
Countervalue = 0
Danbalance = 3
Counterowner = Alice
7
inc(5)
CounterCarl 50
inc(2)
Increased(3, Carl)
Increased(4, Carl)
Eve--- 5.28
hash( )
CounterBob 11
inc(1)
CounterDan 17
inc(2)
Increased(0, Bob)
Increased(1, Dan)
Increased(2, Dan)
State 2
Alicebalance = 20
Bobbalance = 16.89
Carlbalance = 5
Countervalue = 3
Danbalance = 2.83
Evebalance = 5.28
State 3
Alicebalance = 20
Bobbalance = 16.89
Carlbalance = 4.83
Countervalue = 5
Danbalance = 8.07
Evebalance = 4.93

Smart contracts Smart contracts issues
Smart contracts issues I
No privacy or secrets
Every information ever published on the blockchain stays on the
blockchain
The private state of a smart contract is not secret
Pseudo-anonymity can be broken with statistics & data-fusion
Illegal/anti-ethic behaviour can be revealed years later
! No secret voting?!

Smart contracts issues II
Poor randomness
It is diﬃcult to achieve (pseudo-)randomness because of the lack of
trustable sources
Real randomness cannot be employed (replicas would diverge)
Most of the blocks observable information are under the control of
the miner
e.g. timestamp, height, hash, etc.
The block hash seems a good choice
but this is an egg-and-chicken problem
! No lottery?!

Smart contracts issues III
Smart contract inter-communication
Can a SC interact with another one? Which is the exact semantics of
doing so? Is OOP the best programming paradigm?
In Ethereum, SC are essentially objects communicating by means of
synchronous method calls. The callee SC are referenced by callers by
means of their address:
the control ﬂow originating from a user may traverse more than a SC
the caller waits for the callee
unattended re-entrancy if diﬃcult to avoid [4, 20]
and it may lead to undesired behavioural subtleties and frauds [13]
https://medium.com/gus tavo guim/reentrancy-attack-on-smart-contracts

Smart contracts issues IV
Impossibility to ﬁx bugs
SC code is immutable. Immutability is both a blessing and a curse. Buggy
contracts cannot be ﬁxed, updated, replaced, or un-deployed
Buggy, misbehaving, fraudolent SCs will remain so, wasting miners
resources
Paramount importance of correct-design and formal validation
a problem per se in Turing-complete languages
Behavioural OOP design patterns are possible, but critical because of
the previous issue

Smart contracts issues V
Lack of proactiveness
SCs are purely reactive computational entities
They always need to borrow some user’s control ﬂow
They are time-aware but not reactive to time
They cannot schedule or postpone computations
no periodic computation (e.g. payment)

Smart contracts issues VI
Disembodiement [21] & lack of concurrency
Computation is logically located everywhere and transactions are strictly
sequential. This may be a wasteful approach in some cases:
Independent computation cannot be executed concurrently
Computations only making sense locally need to be replicated globally
Heavy computations cannot be splitted into parts to be run
concurrently

Smart contracts issues VII
Granularity of computation-related costs
Ethereum is not the ﬁrst platform applying a price to computation:
e.g. Common practice on the Cloud, and the X-as-a-Service paradigm
BTW, is the instruction-level cost granularity the better one?
e.g. In the most trivial implementation of a publish-subscribe mechanism,
it is the publisher paying the variable price

Research perspectives Programming paradigms
Programming paradigms for smart contracts
Problem ! HLL = High Level Language
SCs research care a lot about HLLs but some issues are related to their
underlying operational semantics:
Synchronous calls are usually hard coded by construction
Poor care for what concerns inter-SC interaction
Lack of control ﬂow encapsulation
Lack of proactiveness
Goals
Investigating the adoption of interaction-friendly paradigms such as actors
or agents

Smart contracts as Actors I
Possible modiﬁcation to SCs operational semantics:
Asynchronous message passing as the unique means of inter-SC
communication + control ﬂow encapsulation
The total ordering of events perfectly matches the event-loop
semantics of Actors
Sending a message implies issuing an invocation TX
Analogously to what users do
Messages are sent only after the current TX terminates correctly
Selective/guarded receive for enabling or delaying some computation
Private, synchronous call are still possible
Can be used to implement pure computations

Smart contracts as Actors II
Interesting questions arising from this vision:
? Who is paying for SC-initiated control ﬂows?
? How to compensate miners for delayed computations?
Possible activities
Re-thinking or editing some BCT formal semantics in terms of actors
Forking some existing BCT project to inject the actors semantics
Designing (and developing?) a novel BCT project exposing an
actor-based SC abstraction

Smart contracts and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) I
There seems to be more degrees of freedom here:
Diﬀerent, possibly overlapping, declination of the Agent notion:
e.g. Believes-Desires-Intentions (BDI), Agents & Artifacts (A&A)
Diﬀerent possible mappings are for:



Agent
Environment
Artifact?
Which choices are the best ones and why?

Smart contracts and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) II
For instance, let’s image SCs as BDI agents:
Then, what’s the environment? What can an agent perceive?
Is goal-oriented reasoning useful in this context?
Should a SC reason about how to execute its business logic?
What about epistemic actions?
Should a SC ask for unknown informations to other (human?) agents?
Do multiple intentions (i.e., multiple control ﬂows) make sense?
Who is paying for them?
Who is in charge for executing them? Using which concurrency model?
Possible activities
Re-thinking or editing some BCT formal semantics in terms of agents,
environment, artifacts, etc.

Research perspectives Logic programming
Logic-based smart contracts I
Problem ! HLL = High Level Language
SCs currently lack:
high level understandability in their HLLs
observability of the deployed source code
some degree of evolvability enabling them to be modiﬁed (or ﬁxed)
Goals
Investigating how the adoption of a logic interpreted language (e.g.
Prolog) may improve SC for what concerns such aspects

Logic-based smart contracts II
Employing a logic language, such as Prolog, introduces some beneﬁts:
naturally declarative and goal-oriented, improving understandability
static KB for the immutable code, dynamic KB for the mutable part
asserts & retracts only aﬀect the dynamic KB
thus enabling some sort of controlled evolvability
being an interpreted language it always possible to inspect the KB
without disassemblers
guarded/selective receive to enforce a boundary for SCs API
context-aware predicates for inspecting the current context
similarly to Solidity’s Globally Available Variables

Logic-based smart contracts III
. . . And some more questions:
should the computational economic cost model be re-designed to
embrace LP basic mechanisms? ! LP = Logic Programming
how should logic SCs interact?
Possible activities
Re-thinking or editing some BCT formal semantics to embrace such a
vision
Designing (and develop) such a novel vision from scratch

Research perspectives Blackboard-based approaches
Blackboard-based approaches and smart contracts
Opportunity
Shared blackboards systems may take real advantage of the replication and
fault-tolerance features they would inherit if deployed on top of a BCT
layer. For instance:
e.g. tuple-based coordination
e.g. distributed logic programming
Goals
Investigating whether BCTs are useful in such contexts or not.
Considering such contexts as applications, looking for improvements
to the BCTs

Tuple-based coordination on the Blockchain I
Can we build the archetypal Linda model on top of BCTs?
If yes, tuple spaces would inherit
a lot of desirable properties
e.g. Decentralisation & replication,
fault-tolerance, consistency, etc.
? Which computational economical
cost model for Linda primitives?
? How to handle control
flow-related aspects?
e.g. suspensive semantics
? Can we inject programmability
too?
Networked hosts
The Blockchain
Communication 
& Coordination 
services
Application 
specific 
services
Workflow 
management
Service 
orchestration
Dependencies 
resolution
Data 
pipelines
Internet of Things
Business Intelligence Web Services
Figure: Our vision: BCTs as the
backbone on top of which
communication and coordination
services are built

Tuple-based coordination on the Blockchain II
Possible activities
Compare several BCTs from the coordination-capabilities point of
view, modelling and implementing Linda on top of them
Compare several BCTs from the coordination-capabilities point of
view, modelling and implementing ReSpecT on top of them

Distributed LP on the Blockchain
Can we employ the blockchain as a blackboard enabling distributed agents
to cooperatively participate to some SLD reasoning process?
Again, desirable properties would be “automatically” inherited
LP-friendly economical incentives/disincentives could be conceived
stimulating miners to adopt a particular strategy when
building/exploring some proof-tree
Concurrent LP has some well-known critic aspects
e.g. AND-parallelism, OR-parallelism, termination, non-termination, shared
variables
? How to handle KB mutability while reasoning?
Possible activities
Develop (at least) a proof of concept or sketched implementation
showing the feasibility of concurrent, blockchain-based, SLD
resolution process

Research perspectives Formal (meta-)model
Formal (meta-)model for BCTs and smart contracts
Problem
A part from Ethereum, other mainstream BCTs lack a formal semantics
specification. Furthermore, a general meta-model comprehending them all
is still missing.
Goals
Defining a meta-model explaining all (or most) existing BCTs
or proving it to be impossible
Defining an operational semantics for all (or most) existing BCTs
Showing why the operational semantics of each BCT is an instance of
the general meta-model
Possible activities
SLR about the formal semantics of one or more BCTs
Define your own formal semantics/meta-model

Research perspectives Simulating the blockchain
Simulating the blockchain
Problem
Some local consensus approaches lack formal theorems proving their
properties or their sensibility to the parameters variation
e.g. ∆T, CP distribution, economical cost model, etc.
Goals
Designing & developing an agent-based simulation framework where such
interrelated aspects can be studied in silico
Possible activities
Develop the simulation framework and show its eﬀectiveness by
simulating a simple consensus model
Design a complex consensus model to be simulated on the
aforementioned framework to reveal critical parameters regions

Research perspectives Local consensus mechanisms
Local consensus mechanisms
Problem
Classical BFT consensus algorithms are very powerful but their
performance essentially degrades with the amount of nodes
Goals
Conceive, design, implement, and assess other local (stochastic?)
consensus mechanisms ensuring some (possibly provable) security
properties.
Possible activities
SLR on classical/novel consensus mechanisms: compare & classify
Implement some classical/novel consensus protocol
Design your own (non-trivial) consensus mechanism

Research perspectives Concurrency, sharding and DAGs
Concurrency, sharding & DAGs
Problem
BCTs lack real concurrency or situatedness (of both data and
computations) and these lacks are inherited by SCs This is essentially a
waste of storage/computational resources
Goals
Conceive a non-trivial solution enabling some of the following features:
concurrent execution of independent SCs
data and computation partitioning on diﬀerent nodes
branching/merging of the blockchain (making it a DAG)
Possible activities
SLR on such aspects
Design your own (non-trivial) concurrent BCT

Research perspectives Privacy & confidentiality
Privacy & confidentiality for smart contracts
Problem
SCs lack confidentiality when interacting with users, and some means to
hide their private internal state
Goals
Developing a cryptographic schema aimed at injecting some degree of
confidentiality/privacy into smart contracts
Possible activities
SLR on privacy/confidentiality-related aspects
Design your own (non-trivial) cryptographic schema

References
References I
[1] Proof of stake.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake.
[2] The tangle.
https://iotatoken.com/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf.
[3] Elli Androulaki, Artem Barger, Vita Bortnikov, Christian Cachin, Konstantinos Christidis,
Angelo De Caro, David Enyeart, Christopher Ferris, Gennady Laventman, Yacov Manevich,
Srinivasan Muralidharan, Chet Murthy, Binh Nguyen, Manish Sethi, Gari Singh, Keith
Smith, Alessandro Sorniotti, Chrysoula Stathakopoulou, Marko Vukoli´c, Sharon Weed
Cocco, and Jason Yellick.
Hyperledger Fabric: A Distributed Operating System for Permissioned Blockchains.
Proceedings of the Thirteenth EuroSys Conference on - EuroSys ’18, pages 1–15, jan 2018.
[4] Nicola Atzei, Massimo Bartoletti, and Tiziana Cimoli.
A survey of attacks on Ethereum smart contracts (SoK).
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artiﬁcial
Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 10204 LNCS(July):164–186, 2017.

References
References II
[5] Pierre-Louis Aublin, Rachid Guerraoui, Nikola Kneˇzević, Vivien Quéma, and Marko
Vukolić.
The Next 700 BFT Protocols.
ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 32(4):1–45, jan 2015.
[6] Adam Back.
Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure.
Http://Www.Hashcash.Org/Papers/Hashcash.Pdf, (August):1–10, 2002.
[7] Eric A. Brewer.
Towards robust distributed systems (abstract).
In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed
Computing, PODC ’00, pages 7–, New York, NY, USA, 2000. ACM.
[8] Christian Cachin and Marko Vukolić.
Blockchain Consensus Protocols in the Wild.
jul 2017.
[9] Miguel Castro and Barbara Liskov.
Practical byzantine fault tolerance and proactive recovery.
ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 20(4):398–461, 2002.

References
References III
[10] Bernadette Charron-Bost, Fernando Pedone, and Andr´e Schiper, editors.
Replication: Theory and Practice.
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010.
[11] Lin Chen, Lei Xu, Nolan Shah, Zhimin Gao, Yang Lu, and Weidong Shi.
On security analysis of proof-of-elapsed-time (poet).
In Paul Spirakis and Philippas Tsigas, editors, Stabilization, Safety, and Security of
Distributed Systems, pages 282–297, Cham, 2017. Springer International Publishing.
[12] John R. Douceur.
The Sybil Attack.
pages 251–260, 2002.
[13] Quinn Dupont.
Experiments in Algorithmic Governance : A history and ethnography of “ The DAO ,” a
failed Decentralized Autonomous Organization.
Bitcoin and Beyond, pages 1–18, 2017.
[14] Ittay Eyal and Emin G¨un Sirer.
Majority is not enough: Bitcoin mining is vulnerable.
Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 8437:436–454, 2014.

References
References IV
[15] Michael J. Fischer, Nancy A. Lynch, and Michael S. Paterson.
Impossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty process.
Journal of the ACM, 32(2):374–382, 1985.
[16] Stuart Haber and W.Scott Stornetta.
How to time-stamp a digital document.
Journal of Cryptology, 3(2):99–111, 1991.
[17] Leslie Lamport.
The Part-Time Parliament.
ACM Transactions on Computer Sys-tems, 16(2):133–169, 1998.
[18] Leslie Lamport, Benjamin C. Reed, Flavio P. Junqueira, Diego Ongaro, John Ousterhout,
Michael a Olson, Keith Bostic, Margo Seltzer, Cynthia Dwork, Nancy Lynch, Larry
Stockmeyer, Jim Shore, Fred B Schneider, Leslie Lamport, Miguel Castro, Barbara H
Liskov, H.Zou, F.Jahanian, Leslie Lamport, Dahlia Malkhi, Lidong Zhou, X Zhang,
D. Zagorodnov, M Hiltunen, Keith Marzullo, R.D. Schlichting, Navin Budhiraja, Keith
Marzullo, Fred B Schneider, Sam Toueg, R. Al-Omari, Arun K. Somani, G. Manimaran,
Flavio P. Junqueira, Benjamin C. Reed, Marco Seraﬁni, Navin Budhiraja, Rachid
Guerraoui, Andr´e Schiper, M. Pease, R. Shostak, Leslie Lamport, Dahlia Malkhi, Lidong
Zhou, Lamport July, Barbara H Liskov, and James Cowling.
In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm.

References
References V
Atc ’14, 22(2):305–320, 2014.
[19] Leslie Lamport, Robert Shostak, and Marshall Pease.
The Byzantine Generals Problem.
ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 4(3):382–401, 1982.
[20] Loi Luu, Duc-Hiep Chu, Hrishi Olickel, Prateek Saxena, and Aquinas Hobor.
Making Smart Contracts Smarter.
In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications
Security - CCS’16, pages 254–269, New York, New York, USA, 2016. ACM Press.
[21] Stefano Mariani and Andrea Omicini.
TuCSoN on Cloud: An event-driven architecture for embodied/disembodied coordination.
Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 8286 LNCS(PART 2):285–294, 2013.
[22] Andrew Miller, Yu Xia, Kyle Croman, Elaine Shi, and Dawn Song.
The Honey Badger of BFT Protocols.
[23] Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
Www.Bitcoin.Org, page 9, 2008.

References
References VI
[24] Fred B. Schneider.
Implementing Fault-tolerant Services Using the State Machine Approach: A Tutorial.
ACM Comput. Surv., 22(4):299–319, 1990.
[25] Yonatan Sompolinsky and A Zohar.
Accelerating Bitcoin’s Transaction Processing. Fast Money Grows on Trees, Not Chains.
IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, 881:1–31, 2013.
[26] Jo˜ao Sousa and Alysson Bessani.
From Byzantine consensus to BFT state machine replication: A latency-optimal
transformation.
Proceedings - 9th European Dependable Computing Conference, EDCC 2012, pages
37–48, 2012.
[27] Nick Szabo.
Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets.
Alamut.Com, (c):16, 1996.
[28] Gavin Wood.
Ethereum: a secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger.
Ethereum Project Yellow Paper, pages 1–32, 2014.

A gentle introduction to the
Blockchain and Smart contracts
Giovanni Ciatto { giovanni.ciatto@unibo.it }
Talk @ Autonomous Systems Course, A.Y. 17/18
Dipartimento di Informatica, Scienza e Ingegneria—Universit`a di Bologna
May 30, 2018

A gentle introduction to the Blockchain and Smart Contracts

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