Abstract
Ethereum, a blockchain, supports its own cryptocurrency named Ether and smart contracts. Although more than 8M smart contracts have been deployed on Ethereum, little is known about the characteristics of its users, smart contracts, and the relationships among them. We conduct the first systematic study on Ethereum by leveraging graph analysis to characterize three major activities on Ethereum, namely money transfer, smart contract creation, and smart contract invocation. We collect all transaction data, construct three graphs from the data to characterize major activities via graph analysis, and discover new insights. Moreover, we address three security issues based on graphs.
- Bitcoin Wiki. 2018. Bitcoin Script. Retrieved from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script.Google Scholar
- Coin Market Cap. 2018. CrypoCurrency Market Capitalizations. Retrieved from https://coinmarketcap.com/.Google Scholar
- Ethereum. 2018. Ethereum Homestead Documentation. Retrieved from http://www.ethdocs.org/en/latest/.Google Scholar
- Ethereum community. 2018. Etherscan, The Ethereum Blockchain Explorer. Retrieved from https://etherscan.io/.Google Scholar
- Mokhtar Bin Abdullah. 1990. On a robust correlation coefficient. J. Roy. Stat. Soc. Series D (The Stat.) 39, 4 (1990), 455--460.Google Scholar
- Andreas M. Antonopoulos. 2014. Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies. O’Reilly Media, Inc.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Annika Baumann, Benjamin Fabian, and Matthias Lischke. 2014. Exploring the Bitcoin network. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies.Google Scholar
- Bitcoin. 2017. Change. Retrieved from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Change.Google Scholar
- Bok. 2016. Ethereum Network Attackers IP Address Is Traceable. Retrieved from https://www.bokconsulting.com.au/blog/ethereum-network-attackers-ip-address-is-traceable/.Google Scholar
- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page. 1998. The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual web search engine. Comput. Netw. ISDN Syst. 30 (1998), 107--117.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Andrei Broder, Ravi Kumar, Farzin Maghoul, Prabhakar Raghavan, Sridhar Rajagopalan, Raymie Stata, Andrew Tomkins, and Janet Wiener. 2000. Graph structure in the web. Comput. Netw. 33 (2000), 309--320.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Christian Cachin, A. D. Caro, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez, Björn Tackmann, and Marko Vukolic. 2017. The transaction graph for modeling blockchain semantics. Retrieved from https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1070.pdf.Google Scholar
- Wren Chan and Aspen Olmsted. 2017. Ethereum transaction graph analysis. In Proceedings of the International Conference for Internet Technology and Secured Transactions.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Jérémy Charlier, Sofiane Lagraa, and Jerome Francois. 2017. Profiling smart contracts interactions with tensor decomposition and graph mining. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases.Google Scholar
- Ting Chen, Xiaoqi Li, Xiapu Luo, and Xiaosong Zhang. 2017. Under-optimized smart contracts devour your money. In Proceedings of the IEEE 24th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Ting Chen, Xiaoqi Li, Ying Wang, Jiachi Chen, Zihao Li, Xiapu Luo, Man Ho Au, and Xiaosong Zhang. 2017. An adaptive gas cost mechanism for Ethereum to defend against under-priced DoS attacks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Ting Chen, Zihao Li, Hao Zhou, Jiachi Chen, Xiapu Luo, Xiaoqi Li, and Xiaosong Zhang. 2018. Towards saving money in using smart contracts. In Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: New Ideas and Emerging Technologies Results.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Ting Chen, Yuxiao Zhu, Zihao Li, Jiachi Chen, Xiaoqi Li, Xiapu Luo, Xiaodong Lin, and Xiaosong Zhang. 2018. Understanding Ethereum via graph analysis. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Aaron Clauset, Cosma Rohilla Shalizi, and Mark E. J. Newman. 2009. Power-law distributions in empirical data. SIAM Rev. 51 (2009), 661--703. Issue 4.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Ethereum. 2018. JavaScript API. Retrieved from https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JavaScript-API#web3ethgettransaction.Google Scholar
- Etherscan. 2018. Ethereum Developer APIs. Retrieved from https://etherscan.io/apis#accounts.Google Scholar
- Gnosis. 2018. Ethereum Multisignature Wallet. Retrieved from https://github.com/Gnosis/MultiSigWallet.Google Scholar
- Alex Greaves and Benjamin Au. 2015. Using the bitcoin transaction graph to predict the price of bitcoin. Retrieved from http://snap.stanford.edu/class/cs224w-2015/projects_2015/Using_the_Bitcoin_Transaction_Graph_to_Predict_the_Price_of_Bitcoin.pdf.Google Scholar
- Neville Grech, Michael Kong, Anton Jurisevic, Lexi Brent, Bernhard Scholz, and Yannis Smaragdakis. 2018. MadMax: Surviving out-of-gas conditions in Ethereum smart contracts. In Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Hiddentao. 2016. Prevent replay attacks. Retrieved from https://github.com/hiddentao/smart-solidity-docs/blob/master/PreventReplayAttacks.md.Google Scholar
- IC3. 2016. GasToken.io—Cheaper Ethereum Transactions, Today. Retrieved from https://gastoken.io/.Google Scholar
- Phanny ITH. 2009. Guideline for Interpreting Correlation Coefficient. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/phannithrupp/guideline-for-interpreting-correlation-coefficient.Google Scholar
- Jerome Kehrli. 2016. Blockchain 2.0—From Bitcoin Transactions to Smart Contract applications. Retrieved from https://www.niceideas.ch/blockchain_2.0.pdf.Google Scholar
- Kentstate. 2019. SPSS Tutorials: Pearson Correlation. Retrieved from https://libguides.library.kent.edu/SPSS/PearsonCorr.Google Scholar
- Lucianna Kiffer, Dave Levin, and Alan Mislove. 2018. Analyzing Ethereum’s contract topology. In Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Sergio Demian Lerner. 2015. RSK-White Paper Overview. Retrieved from https://docs.rsk.co/RSK_White_Paper-Overview.pdf.Google Scholar
- Xiaoqi Li, Peng Jiang, Ting Chen, Xiapu Luo, and Qiaoyan Wen. 2017. A survey on the security of blockchain systems. Fut. Gen. Comput. Syst. (Aug. 2017).Google Scholar
- Loi Luu, Duc-Hiep Chu, Hrishi Olickel, Prateek Saxena, and Aquinas Hobor. 2016. Making smart contracts smarter. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Damiano Di Francesco Maesa and Laura Ricci. 2016. An analysis of the Bitcoin users graph: Inferring unusual behaviours. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Complex Networks and their Applications.Google Scholar
- Natarajan Meghanathan. 2016. Assortativity analysis of real-world network graphs based on centrality metrics. Comput. Inf. Sci. 9 (2016), 7--25. Issue 3.Google Scholar
- Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole, Grant Jordan, Kirill Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage. 2013. A fistful of bitcoins: Characterizing payments among men with no names. In Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Nick Mwenda. 2018. Last winner game jams Ethereum network—Is Ethereum (ETH) dominance at stake? Retrieved from https://cryptoglobalist.com/2018/08/17/last-winner-game-jams-ethereum-network-is-ethereum-eth-dominance-at-stake/.Google Scholar
- PeckShield. 2018. Pwning Fomo3D Revealed: Iterative, Pre-Calculated Contract Creation For Airdrop Prizes! Retrieved from https://medium.com/@peckshield/pwning-fomo3d-revealed-iterative-pre-calculated-contract-creation-for-airdrop-prizes-31944a01387e.Google Scholar
- Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan. 2011. An analysis of anonymity in the Bitcoin system. In Security and Privacy in Social Networks. 197--223.Google Scholar
- Sara Nadiv Soffer and Alexei Vazquez. 2005. Network clustering coefficient without degree-correlation biases. Phys. Rev. E 71, 5 (2005).Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Shahar Somin, Goren Gordon, and Yaniv Altshuler. 2018. Network analysis of ERC20 tokens trading on Ethereum blockchain. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Complex Systems.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Flora Sun. 2018. UTXO vs Account/Balance Model. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@sunflora98/utxo-vs-account-balance-model-5e6470f4e0cf.Google Scholar
- Petar Tsankov, Andrei Dan, Dana Drachsler-Cohen, Arthur Gervais, Florian Bünzli, and Martin Vechev. 2018. Securify: Practical security analysis of smart contracts. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Fabian Vogelsteller and Vitalik Buterin. 2015. ERC-20 Token Standard. Retrieved from https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-20.md.Google Scholar
- Xiaomin Wang, Matthieu Latapy, and Michele Soria. 2012. Deciding on the type of the degree distribution of a graph from traceroute-like measurements. Int. J. Comput. Netw. Commun. 4, 3 (2012), 151--168.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Gavin Wood. 2018. Ethereum: A secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger. Retrieved from https://ethereum.github.io/yellowpaper/paper.pdf.Google Scholar
- Steve Y. Yang and Jinhyoung Kim. 2015. Bitcoin market return and volatility forecasting using transaction network flow properties. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence.Google Scholar
- Chen Zhao and Yong Guan. 2015. A Graph-based investigation of bitcoin transactions. In Proceedings of the IFIP International Conference on Digital Forensics.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Yi Zhou, Deepak Kumar, Surya Bakshi, Joshua Mason, Andrew Miller, and Michael Bailey. 2018. Erays: Reverse engineering Ethereum’s opaque smart contracts. In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium.Google Scholar
Index Terms
Understanding Ethereum via Graph Analysis
Recommendations
Traveling the token world: A graph analysis of Ethereum ERC20 token ecosystem
WWW '20: Proceedings of The Web Conference 2020The birth of Bitcoin ushered in the era of cryptocurrency, which has now become a financial market attracted extensive attention worldwide. The phenomenon of startups launching Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) to raise capital led to thousands of tokens ...
Ethereum Analysis via Node Clustering
Network and System SecurityAbstractAs an open source public blockchain with the capabilities of running smart contract, Ethereum provides decentralized Ethernet virtual machines to handle peer-to-peer contracts through its dedicated cryptocurrency Ether. And as the second largest ...
Understanding Ethereum via Graph Analysis
IEEE INFOCOM 2018 - IEEE Conference on Computer CommunicationsBeing the largest blockchain with the capability of running smart contracts, Ethereum has attracted wide attention and its market capitalization has reached 20 billion USD. Ethereum not only supports its cryptocurrency named Ether but also provides a ...






Comments