An overview on smart contracts: Challenges, advances and platforms

Zibin Zheng; Shaoan Xie; Hong Ning Dai; Weili Chen; Xiangping Chen; Jian Weng; Muhammad Imran

doi:10.1016/j.future.2019.12.019

An overview on smart contracts: Challenges, advances and platforms

Zibin Zheng, Shaoan Xie, Hong Ning Dai^*, Weili Chen, Xiangping Chen, Jian Weng, Muhammad Imran

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Computer Science

Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › peer-review

712 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Smart contract technology is reshaping conventional industry and business processes. Being embedded in blockchains, smart contracts enable the contractual terms of an agreement to be enforced automatically without the intervention of a trusted third party. As a result, smart contracts can cut down administration and save services costs, improve the efficiency of business processes and reduce the risks. Although smart contracts are promising to drive the new wave of innovation in business processes, there are a number of challenges to be tackled. This paper presents a survey on smart contracts. We first introduce blockchains and smart contracts. We then present the challenges in smart contracts as well as recent technical advances. We also compare typical smart contract platforms and give a categorization of smart contract applications along with some representative examples.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	475-491
Number of pages	17
Journal	Future Generation Computer Systems
Volume	105
Early online date	17 Dec 2019
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2019.12.019
Publication status	Published - Apr 2020

Scopus Subject Areas

Software
Hardware and Architecture
Computer Networks and Communications

User-Defined Keywords

Blockchain
Cryptocurrency
Decentralization
Smart contract

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.future.2019.12.019

Cite this

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abstract = "Smart contract technology is reshaping conventional industry and business processes. Being embedded in blockchains, smart contracts enable the contractual terms of an agreement to be enforced automatically without the intervention of a trusted third party. As a result, smart contracts can cut down administration and save services costs, improve the efficiency of business processes and reduce the risks. Although smart contracts are promising to drive the new wave of innovation in business processes, there are a number of challenges to be tackled. This paper presents a survey on smart contracts. We first introduce blockchains and smart contracts. We then present the challenges in smart contracts as well as recent technical advances. We also compare typical smart contract platforms and give a categorization of smart contract applications along with some representative examples.",

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note = "Funding information: The work described in this paper was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program, China (2016-YFB1000101), the National Natural Science Foundation of China under (61472338) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China. Imran{\textquoteright}s work is supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia through the research group project number RG-1435-051. The authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers who have provided constructive comments greatly improving the paper. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 Elsevier B.V.",

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AU - Chen, Xiangping

AU - Weng, Jian

AU - Imran, Muhammad

N1 - Funding information: The work described in this paper was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program, China (2016-YFB1000101), the National Natural Science Foundation of China under (61472338) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China. Imran’s work is supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia through the research group project number RG-1435-051. The authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers who have provided constructive comments greatly improving the paper. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

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AB - Smart contract technology is reshaping conventional industry and business processes. Being embedded in blockchains, smart contracts enable the contractual terms of an agreement to be enforced automatically without the intervention of a trusted third party. As a result, smart contracts can cut down administration and save services costs, improve the efficiency of business processes and reduce the risks. Although smart contracts are promising to drive the new wave of innovation in business processes, there are a number of challenges to be tackled. This paper presents a survey on smart contracts. We first introduce blockchains and smart contracts. We then present the challenges in smart contracts as well as recent technical advances. We also compare typical smart contract platforms and give a categorization of smart contract applications along with some representative examples.

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An overview on smart contracts: Challenges, advances and platforms

Abstract

Scopus Subject Areas

User-Defined Keywords

UN SDGs

Access to Document

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