Caracterizando a evolução de software de contratos inteligentes: um Estudo Exploratório-descritivo utilizando GitHub e Etherscan

• Autor(a) principal: Chaves, Alan Rodrigues
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Trabalho de conclusão de curso
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC)
• Texto Completo: http://www.repositorio.ufc.br/handle/riufc/59601
• topic: Contratos Inteligentes; Mineração de Repositórios de Software; Ethereum; Etherscan; GitHub

Blockchain, which started its development after the creation of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, conceives one of the new internet-based digital infrastructures with great disruptive potential. Part of this potential comes from the consolidation of public platforms, such as Ethereum, which enables the development of decentralized applications based on blockchain. Such solutions are based on smart contracts and need to deal with their own characteristics, such as the immutability of data, which directly impacts the evolution of the software, and a transparent access to the source code of the smart contract. In particular, code transparency can be observed through tools such as Etherscan, which provides public access to a vast amount of information from the smart contracts used in Ethereum. In this sense, there is also a movement of adherence to open source development practices, with emphasis on the use of GitHub as a social platform for hosting source code. However, this scenario motivates questions about how the relationship between the smart contract exposed and developed on GitHub and what is actually being used at Ethereum and, consequently, auditable via Etherscan, is carried out. In the form of an exploratory-descriptive research based on Mining Software Repository, this study aims to understand how the process of software evolution in smart contracts takes place based on the relationship between the source codes available on Etherscan and GitHub. From a quali-quantitative analysis, this work contributes in three main perspectives: 1) by characterizing software evolution models regarding the similarity and behavior of projects developed in an open source form on GitHub in contrast to the contract version available in Etherscan, 2) by analyzing collaborative elements regarding the open source development of smart contracts, and 3) by implementing an experimental method based on string comparison for comparing smart contracts similarity.