Smart Contracts WG Scope (extended)

Owned by sterzi
Last updated: Feb 04, 2019
2 min read

The two main research topics with their respective list of interests are:

  1. Technology oriented

    1. Models of and mechanism for computation, such as:
        - Stack machines vs automata vs manipulating algebraic types embedded in a another language

        - Scope for less expressive languages (that may have more tractability for formal methods)

        - Execution determinism, and sources of non-determinism in existing languages

        - Cost models for metering computation (e.g. gas)

        - Paradigms for smart contracts - e.g. 'identity-oriented', functional, process-oriented - extent to which  smart contracts benefit from special purpose languages

        - Parallelism of execution, state independence (i.e. parallel processing in a single block)

    2.         Formal guarantees on outputs of smart contracts
    3.         Smart contract packaging, code reuse, and dependency auditing

    4. Generation of smart contracts from existing artifacts (natural language, business process, state machines, non smart-contract code)

    5. Data structures and state

        - How best to expose through smart contract languages/libraries

        - Sharing state back-ends across execution engines

        - Conflict-free and additive data structures

        - Verifiable and authenticated data structures - e.g. merkle dags, log-backed maps

    6. Privacy
       - Multi-party secure computation

        - Differential privacy

        - Zero knowledge and practical building blocks - types of commitments and witnesses

    7. Tooling and compilers for existing virtual machines
      - WASM/eWASM

        - EVM

        - WebIDL

    8. Design Patterns for Smart Contracts

  2. Law oriented
    1. Smart contracts as representatives of obligations and fulfillment (i.e. 'law')

  - What properties should smart contracts with 'legal charge' have?

  - What relations can smart contracts have with actual contracts and agreements?

  - At what scale to smart contracts best contribute to certainty and execution of agreement?

  - What relationship do legal smart contracts have to models of computation?