Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

5-2021

Abstract

Smart contracts have been plagued by security incidents, which resulted in substantial financial losses. Given numerous research efforts in addressing the security issues of smart contracts, we wondered how software practitioners build security into smart contracts in practice. We performed a mixture of qualitative and quantitative studies with 13 interviewees and 156 survey respondents from 35 countries across six continents to understand practitioners' perceptions and practices on smart contract security. Our study uncovers practitioners' motivations and deterrents of smart contract security, as well as how security efforts and strategies fit into the development lifecycle. We also find that blockchain platforms have a statistically significant impact on practitioners' security perceptions and practices of smart contract development. Based on our findings, we highlight future research directions and provide recommendations for practitioners.

Keywords

Security, Empirical study, Smart contract, Practitioner

Discipline

Databases and Information Systems | Software Engineering

Research Areas

Data Science and Engineering

Publication

Proceedings of the 43rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2021), Virtual Conference, May 22-30

First Page

1410

Last Page

1422

Identifier

10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00127

Publisher

ACM

City or Country

Virtual Conference

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