STAN: Towards Describing Bytecodes of Smart Contract

Xiaoqi Li, Ting Chen, Xiapu Luo, Tao Zhang, Le Yu, Zhou Xu

Research output: Chapter in book / Conference proceedingConference article published in proceeding or bookAcademic researchpeer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

More than eight million smart contracts have been deployed into Ethereum, which is the most popular blockchain that supports smart contract. However, less than 1% of deployed smart contracts are open-source, and it is difficult for users to understand the functionality and internal mechanism of those closed-source contracts. Although a few decompilers for smart contracts have been recently proposed, it is still not easy for users to grasp the semantic information of the contract, not to mention the potential misleading due to decompilation errors. In this paper, we propose the first system named Stan to generate descriptions for the bytecodes of smart contracts to help users comprehend them. In particular, for each interface in a smart contract, Stan can generate four categories of descriptions, including functionality description, usage description, behavior description, and payment description, by leveraging symbolic execution and NLP (Natural Language Processing) techniques. Extensive experiments show that Stan can generate adequate, accurate and readable descriptions for contract's bytecodes, which have practical value for users.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2020 IEEE 20th International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security, QRS 2020
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages273-284
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9781728189130
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2020
Event20th IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security, QRS 2020 - Macau, China
Duration: 11 Dec 202014 Dec 2020

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2020 IEEE 20th International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security, QRS 2020

Conference

Conference20th IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security, QRS 2020
Country/TerritoryChina
CityMacau
Period11/12/2014/12/20

Keywords

  • Ethereum
  • Program comprehension
  • Smart contract

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
  • Modelling and Simulation
  • Software

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