GethReplayer: a smart contract testing method based on transaction replay

IF 2.5 Q2 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS

International Journal of Web Information Systems Pub Date : 2024-04-05 DOI:10.1108/ijwis-08-2023-0138

Xiaohong Shi, Ziyan Wang, Runlu Zhong, Liangliang Ma, Xiangping Chen, Peng Yang

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Purpose Smart contracts are written in high-level programming languages, compiled into Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) bytecode, deployed onto blockchain systems and called with the corresponding address by transactions. The deployed smart contracts are immutable, even if there are bugs or vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is critical to verify smart contracts before deployment. This paper aims to help developers effectively and efficiently locate potential defects in smart contracts. Design/methodology/approach GethReplayer, a smart contract testing method based on transaction replay, is proposed. It constructs a parallel transaction execution environment with two virtual machines to compare the execution results. It uses the real existing transaction data on Ethereum and the source code of the tested smart contacts as inputs, conditionally substitutes the bytecode of the tested smart contract input into the testing EVM, and then monitors the environmental information to check the correctness of the contract. Findings Experiments verified that the proposed method is effective in smart contract testing. Virtual environmental information has a significant effect on the success of transaction replay, which is the basis for the performance of the method. The efficiency of error locating was approximately 14 times faster with the proposed method than without. In addition, the proposed method supports gas consumption analysis. Originality/value This paper addresses the difficulty that developers encounter in testing smart contracts before deployment and focuses on helping develop smart contracts with as few defects as possible. GethReplayer is expected to be an alternative solution for smart contract testing and provide inspiration for further research.

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GethReplayer：基于交易重放的智能合约测试方法

目的智能合约是用高级编程语言编写的，编译成以太坊虚拟机（EVM）字节码，部署到区块链系统上，并通过交易调用相应的地址。即使存在错误或漏洞，部署的智能合约也是不可变的。因此，在部署前验证智能合约至关重要。本文旨在帮助开发人员有效、高效地定位智能合约中的潜在缺陷。设计/方法/途径本文提出了一种基于交易重放的智能合约测试方法--GethReplayer。它利用两台虚拟机构建了一个并行的事务执行环境，以比较执行结果。实验验证了该方法在智能合约测试中的有效性。虚拟环境信息对交易重放的成功率有显著影响，这是该方法性能的基础。使用所提出的方法，错误定位的效率是不使用该方法的约 14 倍。此外，所提出的方法还支持气体消耗分析。原创性/价值本文解决了开发人员在部署前测试智能合约时遇到的困难，重点是帮助开发尽可能少缺陷的智能合约。GethReplayer有望成为智能合约测试的另一种解决方案，并为进一步的研究提供灵感。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

International Journal of Web Information Systems COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS-

CiteScore

4.60

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Global Information Infrastructure is a daily reality. In spite of the many applications in all domains of our societies: e-business, e-commerce, e-learning, e-science, and e-government, for instance, and in spite of the tremendous advances by engineers and scientists, the seamless development of Web information systems and services remains a major challenge. The journal examines how current shared vision for the future is one of semantically-rich information and service oriented architecture for global information systems. This vision is at the convergence of progress in technologies such as XML, Web services, RDF, OWL, of multimedia, multimodal, and multilingual information retrieval, and of distributed, mobile and ubiquitous computing. Topicality While the International Journal of Web Information Systems covers a broad range of topics, the journal welcomes papers that provide a perspective on all aspects of Web information systems: Web semantics and Web dynamics, Web mining and searching, Web databases and Web data integration, Web-based commerce and e-business, Web collaboration and distributed computing, Internet computing and networks, performance of Web applications, and Web multimedia services and Web-based education.