Date:

Smart contract and formal verification

A smart contract is placed on the blockchain by the parties to it. It is then executed by the blockchain itself. These can be difficult to program and flaws cannot be undone once launched on the blockchain. An automatic verification tool for smart contracts is clearly necessary to minimise the risk of errors and to provide a developer friendly interface.

MORE RELATED

Legal and governmental issues

We wish to engage with regulators to find appropriate ways of regulating the holding and transaction of assets on the blockchain. We see this as a necessary precondition to our Mainstream goal. The expectation is that the application of such regulation will be completely (or nearly so) automatic, and that the blockchain itself will ensure that the powers of regulators and governments are not abused. This raises the topics of jurisdiction: whose laws apply to a particular user or asset, how to specify regulations in a way that allows automation, and how regulations apply to smart contracts. For smart contracts, how can we tell in advance that the result of a given contract is certain to satisfy regulations? How can we handle regulations changing during a single contract? How does data protection privacy legislation impact blockchain. Is blockchain a good infrastructure for e-government?

The economics of blockchain

Blockchains have brought a new phenomenon into the world: cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. We are interested in what we might term the microeconomics of a blockchain: how an economy can arise within a single blockchain which coins are spent for goods and services; the forces affecting the value of a cryptocurrencies and the control theory of stabilisation. The corresponding “macroeconomics” then raises the problem of the effect that cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications have on the wider economy. The latter will include the effect of competition from decentralised blockchain applications on traditional sectors.

Consensus algorithms and mining

Consensus algorithms are about how a set of decentralised users maintain a common state or a log. In a typical permission-less setting, the mining process causes a huge waste of real resources like electricity. An interesting question is whether the consensus or the trust among users in a decentralised environment can be achieved without the overconsumption of resources. We have a specific proposal for this — Work your Stake. We want to study this and other solutions.