Blockchain
Blockchains and smart contracts are a promising technology for distributed finance applications. The correctness of smart contracts is crucial, since their code is public, they cannot easily be updated, and bugs can lead to millions of dollars being lost. We have several projects investigating ways of finding vulnerabilities in smart contracts and formally verifying the correctness of smart contract code.
Current Projects
Algorand Centre of Excellence on Sustainability Informatics for the Pacific (Algorand, 2022-2027)
This is a large multi-university project that is advancing the state-of-the-art Algorand blockchain technology, the world’s most powerful and sustainable blockchain, from research and education to provide sustainability in the Pacific Region. Led by Monash University in Australia, ITEE and other UQ schools are involved in different aspects of the project.
Researchers: Ryan Ko, Naipeng Dong, Adam Komarek, Amelia Radke, Gilda Carvalho, Mark Utting, Marten Risius, Paul Dargusch.
AVESC: Automated Verification of Ethereum Smart-Contracts (UQ Cyber Seed Funding, 2022)
Blockchains and smart contracts are a promising technology for distributed finance applications. The correctness of smart contracts is crucial, since their code is public, they cannot easily be updated, and bugs can lead to millions of dollars being lost. This project will investigate a new approach to verifying the correctness of smart contracts that goes all the way from high-level financial properties down to the correctness of the low-level blockchain bytecode that implements the smart contract. The verification process will use automated SMT solvers that do not require theorem prover expertise, so the resulting verification tools will be widely usable.
Researchers: A/Prof. Mark Utting, Dr Naipeng Dong, Dr Marten Risius, Dr Franck Cassez, Mr Daniel Cumming, Mr Sadra Bayat Tork.
Quantitative analysis of Consensus Protocols
This project is funded by SupraOracles to collaborate with the University of Queensland. The project focuses on analysing popular consensus protocols in the blockchain space in order to understand, and truly and transparently present the merits and demerits of each of them.
Researchers: Dr Guangdong Bai, Dr Naipeng Dong