On-Chain Analysis of Smart Contract Dependency Risks on Ethereum
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866909561116426240 |
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| author | Jin, Monica Liu, Raphina Monperrus, Martin |
| author_facet | Jin, Monica Liu, Raphina Monperrus, Martin |
| contents | In this paper, we present the first large-scale empirical study of smart contract dependencies, analyzing over 41 million contracts and 11 billion interactions on Ethereum up to December 2024. Our results yield four key insights: (1) 59% of contract transactions involve multiple contracts (median of 4 per transaction in 2024) indicating potential smart contract dependency risks; (2) the ecosystem exhibits extreme centralization, with just 11 (0.001%) deployers controlling 20.5 million (50%) of alive contracts, with major risks related to factory contracts and deployer privileges; (3) three most depended-upon contracts are mutable, meaning large parts of the ecosystem rely on contracts that can be altered at any time, which is a significant risk, (4) actual smart contract protocol dependencies are significantly more complex than officially documented, undermining Ethereum's transparency ethos, and creating unnecessary attack surface. Our work provides the first large-scale empirical foundation for understanding smart contract dependency risks, offering crucial insights for developers, users, and security researchers in the blockchain space. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_19548 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | On-Chain Analysis of Smart Contract Dependency Risks on Ethereum Jin, Monica Liu, Raphina Monperrus, Martin Software Engineering Cryptography and Security In this paper, we present the first large-scale empirical study of smart contract dependencies, analyzing over 41 million contracts and 11 billion interactions on Ethereum up to December 2024. Our results yield four key insights: (1) 59% of contract transactions involve multiple contracts (median of 4 per transaction in 2024) indicating potential smart contract dependency risks; (2) the ecosystem exhibits extreme centralization, with just 11 (0.001%) deployers controlling 20.5 million (50%) of alive contracts, with major risks related to factory contracts and deployer privileges; (3) three most depended-upon contracts are mutable, meaning large parts of the ecosystem rely on contracts that can be altered at any time, which is a significant risk, (4) actual smart contract protocol dependencies are significantly more complex than officially documented, undermining Ethereum's transparency ethos, and creating unnecessary attack surface. Our work provides the first large-scale empirical foundation for understanding smart contract dependency risks, offering crucial insights for developers, users, and security researchers in the blockchain space. |
| title | On-Chain Analysis of Smart Contract Dependency Risks on Ethereum |
| topic | Software Engineering Cryptography and Security |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.19548 |