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DAppHunter: Identifying Inconsistent Behaviors of Blockchain-based Decentralized Applications

  • Jianfei Zhou
  • , Tianxing Jiang
  • , Haijun Wang
  • , Meng Wu
  • , Ting Chen
  • University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
  • Ant Group

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

A blockchain-based decentralized application (DApp) refers to an application typically using web pages or mobile applications as the front-end and smart contracts as the back-end. The front-end of the DApp helps users generate transactions and send them to the user's blockchain wallet. After the user signs and confirms the transaction using the blockchain wallet, the transaction will invoke the smart contract of the DApp. However, users bear the following risks when using DApps because of the potential inconsistent behaviors in DApps. First, the DApp front-end may generate incorrect transactions inconsistent with users' intentions. Second, the smart contract may have misbehaviors when executing the transactions. Inconsistent behaviors of DApps not only lead to user confusion but also cause significant financial losses. In this paper, we proposed a novel approach to identify inconsistent behaviors of DApps on EVM-compatible blockchains by contrasting the behaviors of DApps that derived from the front-end, blockchain wallet, and smart contracts, respectively. We implemented our approach into a prototype named DAppHunter. We have applied DAppHunter on 92 real-world DApps of Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain and successfully identified 37 DApps with inconsistent behaviors. We confirmed that 35 of them are scam DApps and over 5 million blockchain addresses are at risk of becoming victims of these inconsistent DApps.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering
Subtitle of host publicationSoftware Engineering in Practice, ICSE-SEIP 2023
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages24-35
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9798350300376
DOIs
StatePublished - 20 Sep 2023
Externally publishedYes
Event45th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice, ICSE-SEIP 2023 - Melbourne, Australia
Duration: 14 May 202320 May 2023

Publication series

NameProceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering
ISSN (Print)0270-5257

Conference

Conference45th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice, ICSE-SEIP 2023
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityMelbourne
Period14/05/2320/05/23

Keywords

  • DApp testing
  • blockchain
  • inconsistent behavior
  • smart contract

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