Smart Contract Evaluation By Multi-Criteria Analysis: Selection Challenges And Open Issues, a Review

Abstract

Smart contracts have received increasing attention in recent years for their potential to enable decentralized and automated transactions in various fields, including finance, supply chain management, and real estate. However, selecting and evaluating the appropriate smart contract for a specific application remains challenging due to the large number of available options and various criteria that need to be considered. This paper discusses the challenges and open issues in selecting and evaluating appropriate smart contracts for various applications. It proposes multi-criteria analysis (MCA) to evaluate and compare different options based on multiple criteria. The study aims to provide a comprehensive review of the current state-of-the-art in the field by considering various criteria used in the selection process, such as security, scalability, and performance. The review covers the challenges associated with critical criteria for smart contract selection, including security, privacy, efficiency, scalability, and regulatory concerns. Additionally, the paper presents various criteria used in different domains/groups to carry out various blockchain- related tasks, such as operational function, asset management, mitigation, analysis, communications, planning, and others. The criteria vary from one person to another and from application to application, and the importance level of the criteria is subjective. The paper highlights the need for more research on smart contract platforms' long-term performance and scalability and more comprehensive and objective evaluation methods for MCA of smart contract selection.