Smart Contract Synthesis Modulo Hyperproperties

Norine Coenen, Bernd Finkbeiner, Jana Hofmann, Julia Tillman

Smart contracts are small but highly security-critical programs that implement wallets, token systems, auctions, crowd funding systems, elections, and other multi-party transactions on the blockchain. A broad range of methods has been developed to ensure that a smart contract is functionally correct. However, smart contracts often additionally need to satisfy certain hyperproperties, such as symmetry, determinism, or an information flow policy. In this paper, we show how a synthesis method for smart contracts can ensure that the contract satisfies its desired hyperproperties. We build on top of a recently developed synthesis approach from specifications in the temporal logic TSL. We present HyperTSL, an extension of TSL for the specification of hyperproperties of infinite-state software. As a preprocessing step, we show how to detect if a hyperproperty has an equivalent formulation as a (simpler) trace property. Finally, we describe how to refine a synthesized contract to adhere to its HyperTSL specification.

36th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF 2023).

CSF Distinguished Paper Award 2023.

A preprint is available at arxiv.org, the proceedings can be found on computer.org.

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