AtomCI: A New System for the Atomic Cross-Chain Smart Contract Invocation Spanning Heterogeneous Blockchains

Abstract

Cross-chain dApps (decentralized applications) are enabled by smart contracts interoperability on heterogeneous blockchains. Previous work on cross-chain smart contract invocation has limitations in satisfying compatibility, atomicity, and security simultaneously. To address these limitations, this paper presents a new systemAtomCIthat enables atomic cross-chain smart contract invocations spanning heterogeneous blockchains. Our systemAtomCIis enabled by a synergy of three proposed components: (1) Smart Contract Design Patterns, (2) Cross-chain Expression Protocol, and (3) Cross-chain Service Community, which is based on smart contracts and provides honest and auditable cross-chain service. We implement a prototype ofAtomCIand analyze its security. Extensive results show thatAtomCIimposes reasonable cost and latency of end-to-end cross-chain smart contract invocations, and has less impact of locks on the contract availability. The analysis and evaluation demonstrate thatAtomCIis a promising approach to enable atomic smart contract invocations spanning heterogeneous blockchains.