Abstract
This paper discusses the life cycle of decentralized smart contracts, i.e. digital and executable representations of rights and obligations in a multi-party environment. The life cycle relies on blockchain technology, i.e. a distributed digital ledger, to ensure proper implementation and integrity of the smart contracts. The life cycle consists of four subsequent phases: Creation, freezing, execution, and finalization. For each phase actors and technological services are identified and explained in detail. With the life cycle at hand, risks and limitations of smart contracts and the underlying blockchain technology are briefly discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
Literatur
European Central Bank. Virtual Currency Schemes. Report. European Central Bank. (2012) Technical Report.
Vitalik Buterin. A next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform, white paper.
A. Kosba, A. Miller, E. Shi, Z. Wen and C. Papamanthou, Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts, 2016 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), San Jose, CA, 2016, pp. 839–858.
Koulu, Riikka. Blockchains and online dispute resolution: Smart contracts as an alternative to enforcement. SCRIPTed 13 (2016): 40.
Loi Luu et al. Making smart contracts smarter, in Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ACM, pp. 254-269.
Surden, Harry. Computable contracts. UCDL Rev. 46 (2012): 629.
Swan, Melanie. Blockchain: Blueprint for a new economy. O’Reilly Media, Inc., 2015.
Nick Szabo. The idea of smart contracts, Nick Szabo’s Papers and Concise Tutorials 6.
F. Tschorsch and B. Scheuermann. Bitcoin and Beyond: A Technical Survey on Decentralized Digital Currencies, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials (COMST) (18:3), pp. 2084–2123. 2016.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Dr. Christian Sillaber ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Informatik an der Leopold Franzens Universität Innsbruck.
Bernhard Waltl ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der Fakultät für Informatik der Technischen Universität München.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sillaber, C., Waltl, B. Life Cycle of Smart Contracts in Blockchain Ecosystems. Datenschutz Datensich 41, 497–500 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11623-017-0819-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11623-017-0819-7