CoBlock: a Domain-Specific Language for Compliance Checking on Smart Contract Execution Data

Abstract

Blockchain has been largely adopted in several sectors through decentralized applications. These rely on smart contracts, whose implementation can diverge from the intended logic, leading to unexpected behaviors. Such behaviors can be identified by observing the data produced within smart contracts’ execution, employing compliance checking techniques. Their adoption poses a main limitation since the traditional rule specification languages do not explicitly refer to the blockchain. To address this limitation, we propose a domain-specific language, called CoBlock , to define compliance rules by relying on blockchain characterizations as a first-class citizen. This enables a tailored framework for compliance checking, supporting the definition of rules to check smart contract execution data. The framework is implemented as a web application. We demonstrate and evaluate the applicability of the language and the accuracy and feasibility of the framework using two real-world decentralized applications, namely Augur and PancakeSwap.