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Full-Text Articles in Finance and Financial Management

An Idealist’S Approach For Smart Contract Correctness, Duy Tai Nguyen, Hong Long Pham, Jun Sun, Quang Loc Le Nov 2023

An Idealist’S Approach For Smart Contract Correctness, Duy Tai Nguyen, Hong Long Pham, Jun Sun, Quang Loc Le

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this work, we experiment an idealistic approach for smart contract correctness verification and enforcement, based on the assumption that developers are either desired or required to provide a correctness specification due to the importance of smart contracts and the fact that they are immutable after deployment. We design a static verification system with a specification language which supports fully compositional verification (with the help of function specifications, contract invariants, loop invariants and call invariants). Our approach has been implemented in a tool named iContract which automatically proves the correctness of a smart contract statically or checks the unverified part …


The Future Of Cryptocurrency And Blockchain Technology In Finance, Wanyi Wong, Alan @ Ali Madjelisi Megargel Aug 2023

The Future Of Cryptocurrency And Blockchain Technology In Finance, Wanyi Wong, Alan @ Ali Madjelisi Megargel

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cryptocurrencies have been all the rage in recent years, with many being drawn to their appeal as speculative investment assets. Its proponents also champion the secure and decentralised nature of the technology it is based on, called the blockchain. Given the secure nature of blockchain technology, the idea of adopting cryptocurrencies as legal tender currency has also been mooted and experimented with – with the most famous example being the Central American nation of El Salvador’s bold move to adopting the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as legal tender in September 2021. In theory, this would provide a solution to the high transaction …


Beyond "Protected" And "Private": An Empirical Security Analysis Of Custom Function Modifiers In Smart Contracts, Yuzhou Fang, Daoyuan Wu, Xiao Yi, Shuai Wang, Yufan Chen, Mengjie Chen, Yang Liu, Lingxiao Jiang Jul 2023

Beyond "Protected" And "Private": An Empirical Security Analysis Of Custom Function Modifiers In Smart Contracts, Yuzhou Fang, Daoyuan Wu, Xiao Yi, Shuai Wang, Yufan Chen, Mengjie Chen, Yang Liu, Lingxiao Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A smart contract is a piece of application-layer code running on blockchain ledgers and it provides programmatic logic via transaction-based execution of pre-defined functions. Smart contract functions are by default invokable by any party. To safeguard them, the mainstream smart contract language, i.e., Solidity of the popular Ethereum blockchain, proposed a unique language-level keyword called “modifier,” which allows developers to define custom function access control policies beyond the traditional “protected” and “private” modifiers in classic programming languages.In this paper, we aim to conduct a large-scale security analysis of the modifiers used in real-world Ethereum smart contracts. To achieve this, we …


Analyzing The Impact Of Digital Payment On Efficiency And Productivity Of Commercial Banks: A Case Study In China, Haopeng Wang, Aldy Gunawan Mar 2022

Analyzing The Impact Of Digital Payment On Efficiency And Productivity Of Commercial Banks: A Case Study In China, Haopeng Wang, Aldy Gunawan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Digital payment has become one of the most popular payment methods all around the world, especially in countries that witnessed the rapid development of internet. As a traditional financial institution, commercial banks have been impacted by newly developed payment technology since third payment platforms have attracted customers to use the digital payment for daily consumption, transferring, and even investment. This paper focuses on analyzing whether and how the commercial banks in China have been affected by digital payment by using empirical methods. Systematic Generalized Method of Moments (SYS-GMM) is used to test the relationship between the productivity of commercial banks …


Defining Smart Contract Defects On Ethereum, Jiachi Chen, Xin Xia, David Lo, John Grundy, Xiapu Luo, Ting Chen Jan 2022

Defining Smart Contract Defects On Ethereum, Jiachi Chen, Xin Xia, David Lo, John Grundy, Xiapu Luo, Ting Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Smart contracts are programs running on a blockchain. They are immutable to change, and hence can not be patched for bugs once deployed. Thus it is critical to ensure they are bug-free and well-designed before deployment. A Contract defect is an error, flaw or fault in a smart contract that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. The detection of contract defects is a method to avoid potential bugs and improve the design of existing code. Since smart contracts contain numerous distinctive features, such as the gas system. decentralized, it is important …


Maintenance-Related Concerns For Post-Deployed Ethereum Smart Contract Development: Issues, Techniques, And Future Challenges, Jiachi Chen, Xin Xia, David Lo, John Grundy, Xiaohu Yang Aug 2021

Maintenance-Related Concerns For Post-Deployed Ethereum Smart Contract Development: Issues, Techniques, And Future Challenges, Jiachi Chen, Xin Xia, David Lo, John Grundy, Xiaohu Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software development is a very broad activity that captures the entire life cycle of a software, which includes designing, programming, maintenance and so on. In this study, we focus on the maintenance-related concerns of the post-deployment of smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executed programs that run on a blockchain. They cannot be modified once deployed and hence they bring unique maintenance challenges compared to conventional software. According to the definition of ISO/IEC 14764, there are four kinds of software maintenance, i.e., corrective, adaptive, perfective, and preventive maintenance. This study aims to answer (i) What kinds of issues will smart contract …


Semantic Understanding Of Smart Contracts: Executable Operational Semantics Of Solidity, Jiao Jiao, Shuanglong Kan, Shang Wei Lin, David Sanan, Yang Liu, Jun Sun May 2020

Semantic Understanding Of Smart Contracts: Executable Operational Semantics Of Solidity, Jiao Jiao, Shuanglong Kan, Shang Wei Lin, David Sanan, Yang Liu, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Bitcoin has been a popular research topic recently. Ethereum (ETH), a second generation of cryptocurrency, extends Bitcoin's design by offering a Turing-complete programming language called Solidity to develop smart contracts. Smart contracts allow creditable execution of contracts on EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) without third parties. Developing correct and secure smart contracts is challenging due to the decentralized computation nature of the blockchain. Buggy smart contracts may lead to huge financial loss. Furthermore, smart contracts are very hard, if not impossible, to patch once they are deployed. Thus, there is a recent surge of interest in analyzing and verifying smart contracts. …


Disruptive Technology: Can The Banking Industry Harness Disruption For Competitive Edge?, Edgar Low Oct 2018

Disruptive Technology: Can The Banking Industry Harness Disruption For Competitive Edge?, Edgar Low

MITB Thought Leadership Series

Disruptive innovation was identified as a phenomenon more than two decades ago by prominent Harvard scholar Clayton Christensen. So you may wonder why established industries are only now waking up to the prospect of digital transformation - the banking industry in particular.


Software Nightmares, Manoj Thulasidas Sep 2008

Software Nightmares, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To err is human, but to really foul things up, you need a computer. So states the remarkably insightful Murphy’s Law. And nowhere else does this ring truer than in our financial workplace. After all, it is the financial sector that drove the rapid progress in the computing industry – which is why the first computing giant had the word “business” in its name. The financial industry keeps up with the developments in the computer industry for one simple reason. Stronger computers and smarter programs mean more money — a concept we readily grasp. As we use the latest and …


Reuse And Productivity In Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering: An Empirical Study, Rajiv D. Banker, Robert J. Kauffman Sep 1991

Reuse And Productivity In Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering: An Empirical Study, Rajiv D. Banker, Robert J. Kauffman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Growing competition in the investment banking industry has given rise to increasing demand for high functionality software applications that can be developed in a short period of time. Yet delivering such applications creates a bottleneck in software development activities. This dilemma can be addressed when firms shift to development methods that emphasize software reusability. This article examines the productivity implications of object and repository-based integrated computer-aided software engineering (ICASE) software development in the context of a major investment bank's information systems strategy. The strategy emphasizes software reusability. Our empirical results, based on data from 20 projects that delivered software for …