Smart Contracts: New Boundaries Between the Law and the Internet

A comprehensive survey of smart contract security: State of the art and research directions

The Blockchain is an emerging technology that is used in various applications for data security and trustworthiness. In the case of a public Blockchain, the data cannot be edited or deleted. In the case of a consortium and private Blockchain, the data can be edited or deleted based on the assigned permission, and the data privacy can be maintained. Blockchain's smart contract provides security to stored data, but it is vulnerable to various security threats. Smart contracts still suffer from different variabilities like distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), 51% vulnerability attacks, double-spending problems, and mining Pool attacks. The smart contract, run on a Blockchain framework, is the logical contract between two or more anonymous people without involving a third party. Hyperledger and Ethereum are two important frameworks that support the development of smart contracts using Blockchain technology. This paper has tried to analyze the security issues of smart contracts developed on the Ethereum framework. An application of class scheduling management and student attendance management has been designed to validate and generate a smart contract. Received: 31 May 2025 | Revised: 4 August 2025 | Accepted: 29 August 2025 Conflicts of Interest The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement The data used in this article are virtual data to implement and to establish the algorithm. It is available in GitHub at https://github.com/ashisgitup/e-learning-Blockchain.git. Author Contribution Statement Ashis Kumar Samanta: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing — original draft, Writing — review & editing, Visualization, Project administration.

Smart contracts in blockchain systems are widely used as automated agreements that can expedite the execution of a contract. Based on the characteristics of smart contracts analyzed through agreements in the Indonesian Civil Code (BW), it can be concluded that smart contracts can be legally used in contractual legal activities in Indonesia. This is because smart contracts meet the requirements outlined in the BW as guidelines for contract formation, particularly concerning the validity of contracts. Using a normative method, which employs literature as legal material for this writing, the result shows that the validity of smart contracts in blockchain, based on Indonesian contract law, aligns with the contract law that fulfills the requirements of Article 1320 BW. Smart contracts can also be classified as standard agreements where the parties agree based on an existing and mutually agreed-upon contract. Until now, there are no specific regulations regarding smart contracts in Indonesia, even though smart contracts are already widely used in the country.

In collaborative environments, where enterprises interact each other’s without a centralised authority that ensures trust among them, the ability of providing cross-organisational services must be enabled also between mutually untrusting participants. Blockchain platforms and smart contracts have been proposed to implement collaborative processes. However, current solutions are platform-dependent and deploy on-chain the whole process, thus increasing the execution costs of smart contracts if deployed on permissionless blockchain. In this paper, we propose an approach that includes criteria to identify trust-demanding objects and activities in collaborative processes, a model to describe smart contracts in a platform-independent way and guidelines to deploy them in a blockchain. To this aim, a three-layered model is used to describe: (i) the collaborative process, represented in BPMN, where the business expert is supported to add annotations that identify trust-demanding objects and activities; (ii) Abstract Smart Contracts based on trust-demanding objects and activities only and specified by means of descriptors, that are independent from any blockchain technology; (iii) Concrete Smart Contracts, that implement abstract ones and are deployed over a specific blockchain, enabling the creation of a repository where a single descriptor is associated with multiple implementations. The flexibility and reduced costs of the approach, due to the smart contracts abstraction and the use of blockchain only when necessary, are discussed with a case study on remote monitoring services in the digital factory.

Blockchain is a revolutionary technology that offers a new kind of inventive service. It can handle a variety of sophisticated issues associated with the secrecy, integrity, and availability of fast and secure distributed systems. This concept paper begins by addressing the shift in people's attitudes towards the insurance industry, particularly in Malaysia, and then goes on to understand how the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), Task Technology Fit (TTF), and Initial Trust Model (ITM), influence behavioural intentions in using blockchain smart contracts. A digital insurance platform must be redefined after the increase in online insurance sales transactions prompted by COVID-19 to satisfy the market's expectations. Whereas traditional paper contracts rely on middlemen for execution, blockchain smart contracts are now based on blockchains, which include an immutable record of data and the ability to remove single points of failure. Despite the growing popularity of blockchain research in recent years, research on blockchain smart contract adoption behaviour at the individual level concerning insurance services remains limited. Hence, this study utilises the three models to characterise how performance expectancy, technological context, and initial trust interact to forecast behavioural intention. Furthermore, we stressed the need for additional research to demonstrate the intention to employ blockchain smart contracts is impacted by performance anticipation, technical environment, and personal initial trust. Based on the review, we will design realistic research that will incorporate prospects for theoretical progress as well as empirical discoveries in blockchain smart contract studies. The findings are intended to assist policymakers in developing suitable and improved strategies for capturing interest in blockchain smart contract insurance services in the Malaysian market. We also believe that the evolution of blockchain technology in tandem with smart contracts will enable the creation of new sorts of innovative services, such as insurance.

Blockchain technology has been widely applied in fields such as finance, supply chain, healthcare, and real estate. Aviation fuel is the largest operating cost item for airlines, accounting for 30\%-40\% of China Southern Airlines' operating costs, with an annual expenditure exceeding 30 billion CNY. However, the traditional aviation fuel settlement model suffers from systemic pain points due to paper document circulation, manual reconciliation, and multi-level approval processes, including lengthy procedures (single settlement takes 72 hours), significant capital tie-up (average accounts payable turnover of 45 days annually), and high dispute resolution costs (1.2 % reconciliation error rate). These issues simultaneously lead to prolonged payment cycles for aviation fuel suppliers, lack of high-quality supply chain scenarios for financial institutions, and limited bargaining power for airlines, creating tripartite conflicts. Aiming at the intelligent settlement of aviation fuel for China Southern Airlines, in this paper, we firstly establish a digital aviation fuel settlement platform, which integrates blockchain, smart contracts, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technologies through three-dimensional collaborative innovation across technology, process, and finance. Then, we propose a novel real-time settlement model based on blockchain smart contracts, achieving systematic restructuring of the settlement patterns within the aviation fuel supply chain. The research demonstrates that blockchain smart contract technology, by reconstructing the settlement trust mechanism and value distribution rules, can provide a reusable technical paradigm and business logic for the digital transformation of the aviation energy supply chain, and holds significant practical value for improving overall supply chain operational efficiency.

As blockchain technology increasingly underpins digital transactions, smart contracts have emerged as a pivotal tool for automating these transactions. While smart contracts offer efficiency and security, their automation introduces significant legal challenges. Detecting and preventing fraud is a primary concern. This paper proposes a novel application of artificial intelligence (AI) to address these challenges. We will develop a machine learning model, specifically a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), to effectively detect and mitigate fraudulent activities within smart contracts. The AI model will analyze both textual and transactional data from smart contracts to identify patterns indicative of fraud. This approach not only enhances the security of digital transactions on blockchain platforms but also informs the development of legal standards and regulatory frameworks necessary for governing these technologies. By training on a dataset of authentic and fraudulent contract examples, the proposed AI model is expected to offer high predictive accuracy, thereby supporting legal practitioners and regulators in real-time monitoring and enforcement. The ultimate goal of this project is to contribute to legal scholarship by providing a robust technological tool that aids in preventing cybercrimes associated with smart contracts, thereby laying a foundation for future legal research and development at the intersection of law, technology, and security.

Blockchain technology and its applications are gaining popularity day by day. It is a ground-breaking technology that allows users to communicate without the need of a trusted middleman. A smart contract (self-executable code) is deployed on the blockchain and auto executes due to a triggering condition. In a no-trust contracting environment, smart contracts can establish trust among parties. Terms and conditions embedded in smart contracts will be imposed immediately when specified criteria have been fulfilled. Due to this, the malicious assailants have a special interest in smart contracts. Blockchains are immutable means if some transaction is deployed or recorded on the blockchain, it becomes unalterable. Thus, smart contracts must be analyzed to ensure zero security vulnerabilities or flaws before deploying the same on the blockchain because a single vulnerability can lead to the loss of millions. For analyzing the security vulnerabilities of smart contracts, various analysis tools have been developed to create safe and secure smart contracts. This paper presents a systematic review on Ethereum smart contracts analysis tools. Initially, these tools are categorized into static and dynamic analysis tools. Thereafter, different sources code analysis techniques are studied such as taint analysis, symbolic execution, and fuzzing techniques. In total, 86 security analysis tools developed for Ethereum blockchain smart contract are analyzed regardless of tool type and analysis approach. Finally, the paper highlights some challenges and future recommendations in the field of Ethereum smart contracts.

Blockchain smart contracts are prevalent nowadays as numerous applications are developed based on this feature. Though smart contracts are important and widely used, they contain certain vulnerabilities. This paper discusses various security issues that arise in smart contract applications. They are categorized in the smart contract platform, the applications that integrate with the Blockchain, and the vulnerabilities in smart contract code. A detailed study of smart contract-specific vulnerabilities and the defense against those vulnerabilities are presented in this article. Because of certain limitations of platforms or programming language used to write smart contract, there are possibilities of attacks on smart contracts. Hence different security measures or precautions to be taken while writing the smart contract code is discussed in this article. This will prevent the potential attacks happening on Blockchain distributed applications.

Blockchain smart contracts show the next stage in the development of protocols that support the interaction of independent nodes without the presence of a governing authority. Blockchain smart contracts are believed to be a potentially enabling technology for a wealth of future applications. But turns out, like every other maturing technology, blockchain smart Contract also has it challenges and limitations. Understanding these challenges and limitation can help business making decision before they put their efforts in blockchain application development. In this paper game theory is combined to look into what Smart Contracts are and what they are assumed to be. The aim is to give businesses a clear idea about smart contracts and help them to decide if the contracts are viable for large scale application.

The world today has realized the vast technological evolution that has greatly shaped the production and management functions of business enterprises. Traditional contracts can take weeks or even months to initiate, and there have been numerous instances of breaches and lack of trust for contracts in both the private and public sector. A smart contract can be defined as a self-executing contract that utilizes blockchain technology to digitally enforce, verify, or facilitate the performance or negotiation of a contract. Owing to the security and decentralized system exhibited by blockchain technology, smart contracts can foster transaction credibility between contracting parties without the necessity of third parties as exhibited in traditional contracts. Any business organization that aims at achieving greater heights in management and production dimensions must consider utilizing robust technologies that are aimed at bolstering its competitive edge. Owing to the newness of smart contracts, characterized by very few studies on the same, this research reviews how smart contracts through blockchain technology can be implemented in an organization to enhance performance and outlines the applications, benefits, and limitations associated with such contracts. Keywords: Blockchain technology; smart contracts; smart contract applications; smart contract benefits; smart contract implementation; cryptography; cryptocurrency DOI : 10.7176/JIEA/9-5-07 Publication date :September 30 th 2019

A blockchain is a list of data blocks as a publicly distributed ledger, which are linked together using cryptography. By allowing Turing-complete programming languages to implement smart contracts, recent blockchains such as Ethereum can reduce needs in trusted intermediators, arbitrations and enforcement costs. However, subtle errors in smart contracts have induced an enormous financial loss—for examples, the DAO attack, Parity multisignature wallet attacks, and integer underflow/overflow attacks. To identify such errors in smart contracts, various researches are performed, which are based on static analysis and theorem proving. However, they only support inspection for pre-defined error patterns, or they cannot explore the whole searching space exhaustively or be fully automatic. Hence, in this paper, we propose a novel formal verification technique to analyze blockchain smart contracts by using ATL model checking. In our methodology, we represent the interaction between users and smart contracts into a two-player game and verify properties we want to check using MCMAS that is an efficient ATL model checker for multi-agent systems. Moreover, we present three case studies to show that our proposal can successfully identify subtle flaws in real world smart contracts.

This paper proposes a double-chains-parallelized electronic health record (EHR) matching system which combines asymmetric encryption technology (homomorphic encryption) and blockchain technology. In this double-chains parallelized system, EHR-supply-chain includes sharing nodes and EHR-demand-chain includes the nodes to be matched. The system achieves decentralization, safe and efficient sharing, voluntary circulation of value, effective growth of EHRs' resources by smart contracts in blockchain. This system manages to get effective supervision of EHR in the chains and give some ideas for solving the security problems in the health data sharing process.

The information quality of the current securities market is not high. Using blockchain technology and smart contract, this paper presents a design for a blockchain-based value chains system for information disclosure of listed companies. The framework of value chains system includes three dimensions of integration, control and value-added satisfaction. This paper develops a prototype to demonstrate the functionality of blockchain-based value chains system in real-time accounting, continuous monitoring and fraud prevention and analyses the process of information disclosure. In anticipation of the wider applicability of blockchain technology to support enterprise information systems and continuous monitoring systems, this paper presents an innovative design that utilizes the advantages of blockchain technology that is helpful for improving market information quality and efficiency.

Electronic prescription (e-Prescription) is a digital way to manage medical prescriptions and reduce inconsistencies in the communication between doctors, patients, and pharmacies. Smart contracts allow the automation of tasks and business rules in a decentralized architecture (i.e., without the need for an intermediary or central authority). Platforms such as Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric support smart contracts development through a consensus mechanism such as Proof-of-Work or another criterion among the network's participating nodes. This paper explores Tendermint, a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) based consensus mechanism that has not yet been widely adopted for smart contracts platforms. We apply our devised model to the healthcare application domain, more precisely in the field of e-prescription, and our results demonstrate that smart contracts can be implemented on a BFT-based platform. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the implementation of smart contracts in a BFT-based platform such as Tendermint. We exploit this domain as there can exist some conflicting interests of profit-taking. For example, pharmacists can increase the medication dosage above the one prescribed by doctors for profit-taking. Such a scenario can occur particularly in countries where healthcare is free of charge and offered as a public service (e.g., Brazil). We show that smart contracts in BFT-based blockchain can help in solving problems in these application scenarios. Finally, our two key contributions in this paper are two-fold: (i) exploit smart-contracts in BFT-based platforms where they (smart contracts) are not very established yet in the blockchain domain; (ii) provide a smart-contract-based e-prescription solution to reduce the costs (no need for a central authority) and scams particularly in countries where the medical service is free and public.