Fujitsu Develops Technology to Verify Blockchain Risks

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. and Fujitsu Research and Development Center Co., Ltd. have developed a technology that can verify, in advance, risks associated with smart contracts, which are programs that automatically execute transactions on blockchain platforms. The technology also identifies relevant locations in the source code. Blockchain technology, which was developed as the foundation for Bitcoin, is expected to have applications in a variety of fields beyond finance, including real estate and healthcare.

Because smart contract risks are directly linked with business losses, however, there have been issues with improving their reliability as a system. Now, Fujitsu Laboratories and Fujitsu Research and Development Center have developed algorithms to identify risk-affected transaction sequences on Ethereum, a platform for executing blockchain applications, using symbolic execution technology. Using these algorithms, they have developed technology that is able to comprehensively detect six types of risks in smart contracts, which have the potential to be overlooked in a manual review, and can then identify the relevant locations in the source code. This technology will enable blockchain developers to rapidly develop even safer smart contracts.

Using this newly developed technology, the two companies found that where previous verification tools had a detection rate of about 67 percent, this new technology was capable of 100 percent detection, excepting a few items, and that in terms of precision it achieved an accuracy rate of up to 88 percent, enabling both highly accurate risk detection as well as source code risk location identification. Because over-identification of risk is rare, this technology will enable more efficient smart contract development, and combined with the risk location identification technology, it is also expected to reduce the workload involved in tasks such as specification comprehension, code evaluation, and fixing the code. This technology will contribute to the efficient application of blockchain technology to a wide variety of fields.

Going forward, Fujitsu Laboratories will continue to develop verification technologies, not only for Ethereum, but also for Hyperledger Fabric, a blockchain framework implementation and one of the Hyperledger projects hosted by The Linux Foundation, with the goal of commercialization of this technology during fiscal 2018. In addition, Fujitsu Laboratories will not only continue to develop verification technology for smart contracts, but also broad technology development relating to building secure systems using blockchain.