Evaluating Ethereum development environments

Abstract. Blockchain technology has been one of the hottest buzzwords in the early 2020s and one of the main reasons for that is the interest towards decentralized applications, which use the smart contracts located in the blockchain to serve the application’s business logic. Ethereum is the biggest platform for decentralized applications, and this study focuses on exploring what kind of support developers need for developing Ethereum based products. This is done by first examining the state of the art by conducting a semi-systematic literature review, followed by using a customized DESMET evaluation method, in which the requirements are mapped as features along with the evaluation criteria, to see how well the currently popular Ethereum development environments provide support for the developers. A total of three development environments by the names of Hardhat, Truffle, and Brownie are evaluated, and the achieved results are analysed to find the differences in the level of support they offer for the developers. At the end the findings of the study are summarized, the experiences from the customized DESMET evaluation method are reported, the validity towards the achieved results are inspected, and the possible directions to continue the work is discussed

An Empirical Study into the Success of Listed Smart Contracts in Ethereum

Since it takes time and effort to put a new product or service on the market, one would like to predict whether it will be a success. In general this is not possible, but it is possible to follow best practices in order to maximize the chance of success. A smart contract is intended to encode business logic and is therefore at the heart of every new business on the Ethereum blockchain. We have investigated how to measure the success of smart contracts, and whether successful smart contracts have characteristics that less successful smart contracts lack. The appearance of a smart contract on a listing website such as Etherscan or StateoftheDapps is such a characteristic. In this paper, we present a three-pronged analysis of the relative success of listed smart contracts. First, we have used statistical analysis on the publicly visible transaction history of the Ethereum blockchain to determine that listed contracts are significantly more successful than their unlisted counterparts. Next, we have conducted a survey among more than 200 developers via an anonymous online survey about their experience with the listing process. A significant majority of respondents do not believe that listing a contract itself contributes to its success, but they believe that the extra attention that is typically paid in tandem with the listing process does contribute. Finally, based on the respondents' answers, we have drafted 10 recommendations for developers and validated them by submitting them to an international panel of experts.Cyber Securit