A systematic literature review of blockchain and smart contract development: Techniques, tools, and open challenges

Abstract Blockchain platforms and languages for writing smart contracts are becoming increasingly popular. However, smart contracts and blockchain applications are developed through non-standard software life-cycles, in which, for instance, delivered applications can hardly be updated or bugs resolved by releasing a new version of the software. Therefore, this systematic literature review oriented to software engineering aims at highlighting current problems and possible solutions concerning smart contracts and blockchain applications development. In this paper, we analyze 96 articles (written from 2016 to 2020) presenting solutions to tackle software engineering-specific challenges related to the development, test, and security assessment of blockchain-oriented software. In particular, we review papers (that appeared in international journals and conferences) relating to six specific topics: smart contract testing, smart contract code analysis, smart contract metrics, smart contract security, Dapp performance, and blockchain applications. Beyond the systematic review of the techniques, tools, and approaches that have been proposed in the literature to address the issues posed by the development of blockchain-based software, for each of the six aforementioned topics, we identify open challenges that require further research.