Microsoft Launches Smart Contracts Security Working Group
Microsoft has revealed it is organizing a working group dedicated to improving smart contracts security. Named 'Kinakuta', the group aims to make it easier for the industry to share information and tips about smart contracts, the term that somewhat loosely has come to refer to self-executing blockchain-based code. Yet even while incumbents increasingly express interest in the idea blockchains could come to automate complex transactions, concerns about this use case have grown after a vulnerability led to the collapse of the technology's first large-scale implementation, The DAO. Since....
Related News
The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has published a smart contract security audit specification to ensure consistency when it comes to smart contract security. The Ethereum ecosystem continues to witness a flurry of activity that has individuals and organizations deploying token contracts, adding liquidity to pools and deploying smart contracts to support a wide range of business models. While notable, this growth has also been riddled with security exploits, leaving decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols vulnerable to hacks and scams. For instance, recent findings from crypto intelligence....
No, smart contracts will not rid the world of lawyers, despite the greatest efforts of blockchain innovators. At least, that's according to Nick Szabo, the man widely credited with inventing the smart contract concept itself. During the keynote address at the Smart Contracts Symposium at Microsoft's New York headquarters this week, Szabo gave an update on the industry he helped create – a talk that was followed by a string of commenters from smart contract startups. Addressing a group of about 250 people (comprised largely of members of the blockchain trade association, the Chamber of....
An insurance and reinsurance industry trade organization headquartered in the UK is launching a new blockchain research project. The London Market Group has announced that it will investigate the use of smart contracts and blockchain for potential applications in the wholesale insurance market. Members of the trade organization include representatives from major firms like Allianz, AIG and Lloyd’s. The organization is working with research outfit Z/Yen on the initiative, which according to statements seeks “to create a common view of the potential benefits that smart contracts could....
Ethereum’s community is standing up to the challenge of securing smart contracts by taking steps to implement the lessons learned from the DAO. Microsoft Research, Harvard University and Inra, a French national research institute that employs 2700 computer science researchers from the “world’s most prestigious universities”, have published a highly technical paper [PDF] on the formal verification of smart contracts. The paper presents a framework to analyze and formally verify Ethereum smart contracts using F*, a “functional programming language aimed at program verification.” The initial....
R3 consortium is spearheading efforts to develop and implement master templates for smart contracts. Following the R3 Smart Contract Templates Summit in London and New York in late June, R3 has agreed to collaborate with a working group of its consortium members, standards bodies, law firms, academic institutions, exchanges and market infrastructure providers. The group includes Barclays, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), Norton Rose Fulbright and University College London (UCL). The group’s aim is to develop repositories of smart contract templates for banks to....