TA-SPESC: Toward Asset-Driven Smart Contract Language Supporting Ownership Transaction and Rule-Based Generation on Blockchain

Abstract

Aiming at insufficient situation to express and operate assets in smart contracts, in this article we attempt to add a new asset model into smart contract language (such as SPESC) through combing method of asset's expressions and transactions in real-world contracts. Moreover, a translation mechanism can be set up to accomplish a conversion from the asset model to an executable contract program. On this basis, we propose a new language design toward asset-driven specific smart contracts, called TA-SPESC. This language complies with the structure of real-world contracts and supports a formal definition composed of four modules: Party, asset, term, and contract attribute. This asset model on it can be used to define various types of rights (including the right of ownership, use, possession, usufruct, and disposition of assets), as well as five asset operations (including asset registration, deposit, withdrawal, transfer, and cancellation) to effectively support asset transaction. More important, a series of generation rules are proposed to translate the TA-SPESC contract to an executable contract program. Moreover, taking house rental contract as an example, we provide a TA-SPESC instance and its specific description of translation process according to the generation rules, which supports a semiautomatic generation to executable programs. Finally, the Solidity codes derived from TA-SPESC contracts are run and tested, and the experiment and comparison results indicate that TA-SPESC contracts have high abstraction and low complexity, as well as versatility and convenience of asset transaction, which lead to more reliable software with less errors and fewer misunderstanding.