Reentrancy vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts have caused significant financial losses, prompting the creation of several automated reentrancy detectors.However, these detectors frequently yield a high rate of false positives due to coarse detection rules, often misclassifying contracts protected by anti-reentrancy patterns as vulnerable.Thus, there is a critical need for the development of specialized automated tools to assist these detectors in accurately identifying anti-reentrancy patterns.While existing code analysis techniques show promise for this specific task, they still face significant challenges in recognizing anti-reentrancy patterns.These challenges are primarily due to the complex and varied features of anti-reentrancy patterns, compounded by insufficient prior knowledge about these features.This paper introduces AutoAR, an automated recognition system designed to explore and identify prevalent anti-reentrancy patterns in Ethereum contracts.AutoAR utilizes a specialized graph representation, RentPDG, combined with a data filtration approach, to effectively capture anti-reentrancy-related semantics from a large pool of contracts.Based on RentPDGs extracted from these contracts, AutoAR employs a recognition model that integrates a graph auto-encoder with a clustering technique, specifically tailored for precise anti-reentrancy pattern identification.Experimental results show AutoAR can assist existing detectors in identifying 12 prevalent anti-reentrancy patterns with 89% accuracy, and when integrated into the detection workflow, it significantly reduces false positives by over 85%.* The corresponding authors.a reentrancy vulnerability in Ethereum, leading to substantial financial losses.
We compare the total capital efficiency of secure restaking and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocols. First, we consider the sufficient condition for the restaking graph to be secure. The condition implies that it is always possible to transform such a restaking graph into separate secure PoS protocols. Next, we derive two main results: upper and lower bounds on the required extra stakes to add to the validators of the secure restaking graph to be able to transform it into secure PoS protocols. In particular, we show that the restaking savings compared to PoS protocols can be very large and can asymptotically grow as a square root of the number of validators. We also study a complementary question of aggregating secure PoS protocols into a secure restaking graph and provide matching lower and upper bounds on the PoS savings.
Digital platforms dominate our economy Without a doubt, platform business models have revolutionized almost every industry, from e-commerce (Amazon) and operating systems (iOS and Android) to transportation (Uber), film (Netflix) and hospitality (Airbnb).In 2023, four out of the five most valuable companies worldwide operated based on platform business models.Often, these platform business models have made services more accessible and significantly reduced costs for their users.Platform business models enable the platform provider, as the intermediary, to make these improvements at low costs for their users as network effects lock in users and allow the provider to collect and monetize their data.This mechanism often leads to one strong player dominating the market, allowing them to monetize their monopoly-like position.The recent upsurge in artificial intelligence (AI) has fostered fears that these platform businesses might become even more powerful.More than ever, critics are concerned that current regulations fail to mitigate these dynamics, as antitrust regulations have failed to prevent platform providers from acquiring even more market power.Regulators are often fighting an uphill battle as the platform businesses can often rely on much deeper pockets and smart lawyers who find new ways to play down their employers' real power.
O trabalho objetiva analisar a figura dos smart contracts na perspectiva do princípio da obrigatoriedade dos contratos, de maneira que possa ser determinada uma potencial ressignificação do “pacta sunt servanda” diante deles. Assim, busca conceituar e categorizar a blockchain e os contratos inteligentes para um exame de seus efeitos diante do Direito e o modelo do contrato tradicional. Por conseguinte, é realizada uma breve contextualização histórica da força obrigatória dos contratos, apontando suas concepções na história, analisando-o no contexto do meio digital. Considerando-se essa análise, são sistematizadas suas aplicabilidades em nível global e, posteriormente, na realidade brasileira – de modo a apresentar as possíveis vantagens e desvantagens do instituto. Adota-se na pesquisa a metodologia referencial bibliográfica, utilizando artigos, livros e obras que se reportam ao tema, assim como a legislação brasileira. Diante da pesquisa, conclui-se que o smart contract é uma opção com capacidade de reduzir os custos de transação e alguns riscos inerentes às operações. No entanto, devido às limitações da lógica de programação, seria uma opção viável para contratos mais simples e nichos específicos. Ademais, pode ser vantajoso aos entes públicos, no âmbito de sua própria rede Blockchain e, ainda, em face à possível utilização da moeda digital.
The Preamble of the Spanish Financial Transactions Tax Law establishes that “[t]he shaping of the tax follows the line taken by our neighbouring countries, including France and Italy, thus contributing to greater coordination of these taxes across Europe.” In this sense, the Spanish tax shows important similarities with those established in France and Italy in relation to the levy on the acquisition of certain shares and securities representing the capital of a company for consideration. Nevertheless, both the French and the Italian taxes apply to other types of transactions, not covered by the Spanish Law, which is why it is necessary to carry out the corresponding comparative study. Furthermore, the effects that have arisen from the application of this kind of taxes to financial transactions merited a proper analysis in order to determine if the main goals pursued by these taxes have been achieved in an efficient way. In any case, there are emerging tax challenges in financial markets connected, on the one hand, to the use of crypto-assets and distributed ledger technology, and, on the other hand, to the implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning and the fair taxation of these operations. In this sense, the Spanish tax presents important similarities with those established in France and Italy in relation to the levy of acquisition for consideration of certain shares and securities representing the capital of a company. Nevertheless, both the French and the Italian taxes subject other types of transactions, out of scope of the Spanish Law, which is why it is necessary to carry out the corresponding comparative study. Furthermore, the effects that have arisen from the application of this kind of taxes on financial transactions merited a proper analysis in order to determine if the main goals persuaded by theses taxes have been achieved in an efficient way. In any case, there are emerging tax challenges in financial markets connected, by the one hand, to the use of crypto-assets and distributed ledger technology; by the other one, to the implementation of artificial intelligence and machine-learning and the fair taxation of these operations.
Zhiyang Chen, Ye Liu, Sidi Mohamed Beillahi, Yi Li · 5 authors
Smart contracts, self-executing programs on the blockchain, facilitate reliable value exchanges without centralized oversight. Despite the recent focus on dynamic analysis of their transaction histories in both industry and academia, no open-source tool currently offers comprehensive tracking of complete transaction information to extract user-desired data such as invariant-related data. This paper introduces OpenTracer, designed to address this gap. OpenTracer guarantees comprehensive tracking of every execution step, providing complete transaction information. OpenTracer has been employed to analyze 350,800 Ethereum transactions, successfully inferring 23 different types of invariant from predefined templates. The tool is fully open-sourced, serving as a valuable resource for developers and researchers aiming to extract or validate new invariants from transaction traces. A demonstration video of OpenTracer is available at https://youtu.be/vTdmjWdYd30. The source code of OpenTracer is available at https://github.com/jeffchen006/OpenTracer.
Abstract Contract automation is a challenging topic within Artificial Intelligence and LegalTech. From digitised contracts via smart contracts, we are heading towards Intelligent Contracts ( iContracts ). We will address the main challenge of iContracts: the handling of communications and risk data in contract automation. Our Research Question reads: to what extent is it possible to develop an ontology that automates contracts with communications and risk data? The article designs and conceptualises an iContract ontology. Our findings validate the conceptual expressiveness of our ontology. A brief discussion highlights the value of the ontology design and its application domains. From the results, we may conclude that the current method is innovative and that further research is necessary for handling more complex use cases.
Noor Fatini Izzati Fadzil, Saheed Abdullahi Busari
Non-fungible tokens (NFT) are considered unique digital assets recorded on the blockchain whose ownership and authenticity cannot be duplicated, exchanged, or divided but can be transferred by the owner, allowing the selling and trading of NFT through the blockchain. This study addresses the issues relating to the extent of NFT compliance with Islamic law. It sheds light on the concept of symbols that are not replaceable and presents the opinions of contemporary jurists in dealings with NFT based on a juristic adaptation of these transactions.The study is qualitatively based and using an inductive approach to collect library information and analytical approach to clarify the issue and present the opinions of the jurists. The study found that investing in non-fungible tokens is legally permissible, but the principles of Shariah must be adhered to when dealing with them because they are among the things that were not prevented except by legal evidence. NFTs should be items of legal value that benefit people, and are free from illegal activities such as usury, fraud, and gambling. The study recommends an urgent need for Shariah scholars and technology experts to create an NFT platform that is compatible with Islamic Shariah, and allowing Muslims to participate in it.
Georgios Birmpas, Philip Lazos, Evangelos Markakis, Paolo Penna
In this paper, we investigate the impact of reward schemes and committee sizes motivated by governance systems over blockchain communities. We introduce a model for elections with a binary outcome space where there is a ground truth (i.e., a "correct" outcome), and where stakeholders can only choose to delegate their voting power to a set of delegation representatives (DReps). Moreover, the effort (cost) invested by each DRep positively influences both (i) her ability to vote correctly and (ii) the total delegation that she attracts, thereby increasing her voting power. This model constitutes the natural counterpart of delegated proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols, where delegated stakes are used to elect the block builders. As a way to motivate the representatives to exert effort, a reward scheme can be used based on the delegation attracted by each DRep. We analyze both the game-theoretic aspects and the optimization counterpart of this model. Our primary focus is on selecting a committee that maximizes the probability of reaching the correct outcome, given a fixed monetary budget allocated for rewarding the delegates. Our findings provide insights into the design of effective reward mechanisms and optimal committee structures (i.e., how many DReps are enough) in these PoS-like governance systems.
João Ricardo Pereira Marques, Jo�ão Fabrício Filho, R.A. Pereira Goncalves
Este artigo apresenta uma abordagem para a criação de um dataset com os códigos dos contratos implantados na rede Ethereum. O critério de seleção compreende os três tipos de transações: regulares, de criação e de execução do código dos contratos. As ferramentas ethereumetl e Duckdb são utilizadas para extração dos dados e a criação do banco de dados. A base de dados reúne informações de blocos, transações, código dos contratos, informações sobre as instruções utilizadas em cada contrato e quantas vezes cada contrato foi executado e em quais versões da Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
Blockchain evidence is a technical method for evidence storage, transmission and fixation. Its evidential value has a dual nature, reflected in the fact that it cannot be absolutely tamper-resistant, can only provide periodic assurance of evidence authenticity and the commonly used consortium chains do not possess all the benefits of public chains. Simultaneously, blockchain evidence occupies a unique status within the entire evidence system, it serves as an evidentiary storage mechanism, is essentially an electronic evidence reflecting both the evidence collection process and outcome and its notarisation and forensic examination documents are a type of opinion evidence. It is evident that blockchain evidence does not emerge in a vacuum, rather than serving as a mere replacement for traditional evidence, blockchain evidence represents an upgrade in the functionality and effectiveness of traditional evidence. From this perspective, the improvement of blockchain evidence rules should align with the basic position of ‘technological neutrality’, which means that although technological evolution can lead to rapid changes, legislators are not always required to cater to these dynamic demands. It is essential to distinguish between on-chain and off-chain when addressing issues of authenticity, hearsay and originality, and improvements proposing should within the frameworks of existing electronic evidence rules and opinion evidence rules, thereby unlocking the potential of blockchain evidence.
Regulating cryptocurrency’s place in America’s most popular retirement savings vehicle generates thorny legal, ethical, and social justice dilemmas. Too little regulation could hurt those at highest risk of underfunded retirement. Too much could exacerbate existing racial, ethnic, and gender inequities. Though recent regulatory efforts suggest 401(k) administrators violate their fiduciary duty of care by offering cryptocurrency investment options to plan participants, the established fiduciary regime protects 401(k) plan participants from cryptocurrency risk while respecting their savings preferences. Yet, the current framework falls short of ethically and equitably serving all plan participants, particularly members of underserved communities— a problem largely unaddressed in academic, industry, or regulatory discourse. This Article demonstrates how regulators’ needlessly paternalistic approach toward cryptocurrency options could disproportionately impact minority retirement savings participation. Applying the existing fiduciary framework and practical mechanisms that plan fiduciaries currently use would minimize cryptocurrency risk to participants without rewriting the rules governing plan administration. This Article also proposes a novel, scientifically supported method by which fiduciaries should convey retirement planning information to improve retirement outcomes for all: via non-traditional media.
This article explores the ethical dilemmas propelled by a significant shift in the allocation of trust and intelligence due to blockchain technology and AI, resulting in a notable decrease in transaction costs. The ethical and political implications of democratizing the resulting productivity gains are noteworthy, and while the pie is expanding, how its slices are distributed remains an open question. Enter Worldcoin, an innovative worldwide initiative that creates an identity system based on proof of personhood and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) to provide everyone with a distinct and anonymous "World ID. Using the author's “cyberethics-mix" framework, this paper examines the possible implications of such a system concerning data's protection, ownership, accuracy, and accessibility, underscoring the ethical significance of a political approach emphasizing inclusivity and sustainability through digital decentralization.
Post hoc privacy auditing techniques can be used to test the privacy guarantees of a model, but come with several limitations: (i) they can only establish lower bounds on the privacy loss, (ii) the intermediate model updates and some data must beshared with the auditor to get a better approximation of the privacy loss, and (iii) the auditor typically faces a steep computational cost to run a large number of attacks. In this paper, we propose to proactively generate a cryptographic certificate of privacy during training to forego such auditing limitations. We introduce Confidential-DPproof , a framework for Confidential Proof of Differentially Private Training, which enhances training with a certificate of the (ε, δ)-DP guarantee achieved. To obtain this certificate without revealing information about the training data or model, we design a customized zero-knowledge proof protocol tailored to the requirements introduced by differentially private training, including random noise addition and privacy amplification by subsampling. In experiments on CIFAR-10, Confidential-DPproof trains a model achieving state-of-the-art 91% test accuracy with a certified privacy guarantee of (ε = 0.55, δ = 10−5)-DP in approximately 100 hours.
Open access
Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems
Occupational and Professional Licensing Regulation
Abstract Smart contracts govern transactions using the blockchain as the enforcing medium. They may be a cheaper form of governance of transactions compared to traditional contracts, the hierarchy of firms, and relational contracts. However, I argue that smart contracts do not eliminate transaction costs; rather, they can increase them, particularly when considering the issue of ex‐post efficiency‐enhancing adaptation. Thus, while smart contracts offer a new theoretical and practical way to govern transactions, they are not without challenges and limitations.
Corporate governance encompasses a set of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions that affect how a corporation is directed, administered, or controlled. Technology both enhances and disrupts the traditional board-centric corporate governance system, enhancing efficiency and transparency while introducing new challenges and risks. In this work we examine three key themes comprehensively: the redefinition of information and information asymmetry through the generation of and access to big data; blockchain technology’s transformative potential for aggregating preferences and exercising shareholder voting rights while blurring the line between securities and tokens; and the impact of smart contracts and their underlying infrastructure on the expansion of contracts and the implementation of decentralized governance through decentralized autonomous organizations. These innovative technological solutions empower stakeholders to exercise governance rights effectively, but their complexity also gives rise to new barriers and inequalities. As technology evolves, collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners is imperative to ensure that corporate governance remains effective and responsive to the current dynamic business environment.