About Smart Contract Dispute Resolution

Dispute Resolution for Smart Contract-based Two-Party Protocols

2019 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC) ◽

10.1109/bloc.2019.8751312 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Eric Wagner ◽

Achim Volker ◽

Frederik Fuhrmann ◽

Roman Matzutt ◽

Klaus Wehrle

Keyword(s):

Dispute Resolution ◽

Smart Contract

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Privacy-preserving FairSwap: Fairness and privacy interplay

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies ◽

10.2478/popets-2022-0021 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2022 (1) ◽

pp. 417-439

Author(s):

Sepideh Avizheh ◽

Preston Haffey ◽

Reihaneh Safavi-Naini

Keyword(s):

Dispute Resolution ◽

Third Parties ◽

Security And Privacy ◽

Fair Exchange ◽

Universal Composability ◽

Cryptographic Primitives ◽

The Public ◽

The Third ◽

Smart Contract ◽

And Performance

Abstract Fair exchange protocols are among the most important cryptographic primitives in electronic commerce. A basic fair exchange protocol requires that two parties who want to exchange their digital items either receive what they have been promised, or lose nothing. Privacy of fair exchange requires that no one else (other than the two parties) learns anything about the items. Fairness and privacy have been considered as two distinct properties of an exchange protocol. In this paper, we show that subtle ways of leaking the exchange item to the third parties affect fairness in fair exchange protocols when the item is confidential. Our focus is on Fair-Swap, a recently proposed fair exchange protocol that uses a smart contract for dispute resolution, has proven security in UC (Universal Composability) framework, and provides privacy when both parties are honest. We demonstrate, however, that FairSwap’s dispute resolution protocol leaks information to the public and this leakage provides opportunities for the dishonest parties to influence the protocol’s fairness guarantee. We then propose an efficient privacy-enhanced version of Fair-Swap, prove its security and give an implementation and performance evaluation of our proposed system. Our privacy enhancement uses circuit randomization, and we prove its security and privacy in an extension of universal composability model for non-monolithic adversaries that would be of independent interest.

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Uncertainty and dispute resolution for blockchain and smart contract institutions

Journal of Institutional Economics ◽

10.1017/s1744137421000138 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-15

Author(s):

Bronwyn E. Howell ◽

Petrus H. Potgieter

Keyword(s):

Dispute Resolution ◽

Value At Risk ◽

Time Frame ◽

Human Cognition ◽

Smart Contracts ◽

Smart Contract ◽

Resolution System ◽

Governance Institutions ◽

Human Actors ◽

Dispute Resolution System

Abstract Smart contracts have been proposed as a means of revolutionizing transacting between human actors and contributing to blockchain platforms substituting for many current institutions. However, the technical nature of blockchain platforms and smart contracts requires levels of certainty and foresight sufficient for contracts to be complete. We examine the technical and economic characteristics of blockchains and smart contracts to identify sources of uncertainty that may pose challenges to the ability of these technologies to displace existing institutional arrangements, in particular, the courts and other arbitration arrangements. Despite the development of alternative automated blockchain institutions such as the Kleros dispute resolution system, the case for smart contracts and blockchain applications to supplant real-world institutions remains weak. Inherent incompleteness due to limits to information availability, human cognition, and communication means that traditional contract governance institutions will continue to complement blockchain smart contract governance arrangements. The more complex and unique the transaction, the higher the value at risk, the harder to anticipate and precisely specify contingencies and measure and observe outcomes. Furthermore, the longer the time frame between agreement and execution, the less likely it is that smart contracting will be more efficient than traditional contracting.

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