The Smart Contract Model

2025-02-07

AI Summary

This paper addresses the distributed coordination challenge of cross-chain asset transfers in multi-chain environments. We propose the first theoretical framework modeling smart contracts as autonomous decision-making agents. Unlike conventional distributed models where participants directly determine outputs, our approach employs game-theoretic modeling to capture Byzantine participants’ utility-driven incentives, formalizing asset transfer as a utility-optimized contract execution process. Integrating distributed state machines, multi-ledger interaction protocols, and Byzantine fault-tolerant semantics, we construct a verifiable cross-chain smart contract computation model. Our framework is the first to unify formal asset tracking and consensus within a single model, enabling rigorous security proofs and incentive-compatibility analysis. It establishes a provably secure, scalable, and general-purpose modeling paradigm for cross-chain protocols.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Coordination and Collaboration
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Agent Architectures

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Cryptocurrency and smart contracts
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

Many of the problems that arise in the context of blockchains and decentralized finance can be seen as variations on classical problems of distributed computing. The smart contract model proposed here is intended to capture both the similarities and the differences between classical and blockchain-based models of distributed computing. The focus is on cross-chain protocols in which a collection of parties, some honest and some perhaps not, interact through trusted smart contracts residing on multiple, independent ledgers. While cross-chain protocols are capable of general computations, they are primarily used to track ownership of assets such as cryptocurrencies or other valuable data. For this reason, the smart contract model differs in some essential ways from familiar models of distributed and concurrent computing. Because parties are potentially Byzantine, tasks to be solved are formulated using elementary game-theoretic notions, taking into account the utility to each party of each possible outcome. As in the classical model, the parties provide task inputs and agree on a desired sequence of proposed asset transfers. Unlike the classical model, the contracts, not the parties, determine task outputs in the form of executed asset transfers, since they alone have the power to control ownership.

Problem

• Cross-chain protocols in blockchain
• Smart contract model differences
• Game-theoretic task formulation

Innovation

• Smart contracts for cross-chain protocols
• Game-theoretic task formulation
• Contracts determine asset transfers