Standardisation and UE normalisation of Smart Contracts and Electronic Ledgers

Transcript

[Music] Okay. So, can I start? So, hello to everybody. So, my name is Luigi Liquori and uh I will talk about normalization and standardization of smart contract and electronic ledger. So, first of all, I am a researcher at the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology. But in short, my

research topics are semantic of a programming language, uh, logic, type theory, and peer-to-peer networks. I also work for standardization organization like Etsy and HISO. And I I contribute to the standardization of smart contract domain specific languages and of electronic ledger. of course following EU concerned normative. So first of all because it does not happen very often that one breaks his nose at at the conference the day before. So I have to say thank you to the all the hospital the antib they did a very super

great job. If I am here with you is al also thanks to al these nice people. So okay as the title say I am here to talk about EU normalization and standardization of smart contract and electronic ledger. So there is a a genuine skepticism in Brussels on electronic ledger. So you can read the DT distributed ledger technology or blockchain if you want on smart contract all around smart contract in generally uh uh on everything is decentralized and in particular on everything is not traceable. So this skepticism is due uh to fear uh sometimes some and uh

definitively for lack of communication each other uh at all the level on the chain language specification compiler virtual virtual machine etc. uh we have to say that in Brussel they love to centralize they love to track and trace. So this is uh this is uh what what we feel and uh if you are interested to this uh to this uh topic so there are two must have EU regulation one is called data act and the second one is called it hidas eidas uh okay this is the for the bureaucracy for the bureaucracy this is regulation blah blah blah the first one the data act is on fair access to and use of data

while Hidas 2 which is an amendment of a previous regulation establishing their European digital uh identity uh framework. Other pertinent regulation are Mika of course and GDPR. So for people that read approach for the first time to those regulation they are very very very boring for normal people. Uh for computer scientists there are extremely boring. For blockchain and smart contract enthusiasts there are super mega super mega boring. But uh there are semi- boring and maybe interesting for a mathematician or lower

because infin laws are written in plain English you using the logic which is a kind of model logic branch of uh philosophy and this kind of document can or could be formalized and semi-automatically checked uh in a description computer language. Okay. So uh just to show the fluidity of the law language, let me just s to unzip the definition of smart contract and the electronic ledger. So the first one is smart contract which is essentially a computer program. So very very generic a computer program used for automatic execution of an agreement sorry an

agreement using a sequence of electronic data record. So it's very very very fluid. as a suggestive comparison you can think in programming language as a massive use of classbased style polymorphism and genericity. So uh uh for the for the ledger uh the law say that the ledger can be distributed but also can be centralized. So uh many actor are also missing computer program source code object code uh what about compilers what about virtual machine uh why they also add the word centralized uh they don't write explicitly

blockchain so it seems quite difficult to do business at this level at this level of abstraction and being so technologically anostic uh the risk of this kind of regulation are uh to be useless useless. So it's not a critic but so what is to be done? These are the burning question for the crypto movement and uh those question arise naturally. So the answer is that if you cannot defease your enemy have him as your your friend. uh for example the the two days ago the the the the main talk by the main talk by the inventor of Varium uh

is is that the right thing is to participate to standardization organization. In other words they say to accomplish former property technology is the service of property we want to achieve. So of course if you want to interpret this in chat GPT the inventor of iterium say let's try to participate to standardization activities. Of course this one is a joke but I think that uh indeed indeed we have to play the game of ask accomplish former property and use technology at the service of properties we want to achieve. So at this at this this point uh I found that during this conference

the only talk addressing the issue was the one of of the the lady Katherine Madame Katherine Kirk Patrick by Starkware that only addressed one slide concerning regulation uh standardization organization are are for example like Etsy ISO C or ETU build standard which document protocol technology they don't build code is is not part of standardization business explaining and producing a recommendation on a given topic on the basis of a precise request of the European Commission. So all the standardization organization try to be

in sync each other. This is not systematic but at least they try. EU politician can receive or not those standards and will produce low norms and regulation. So the the standardization organization are the main uh involved are mainly involved in studying electronic ledger and a smart contract. So all the uh I I think that we this community should enter into into this kind of standard in this organization.

Uh because if I have a quick look in on the sponsor side so nobody nobody participate. So I unless maybe one no I think I I have a quick check. So nobody participate. Of course, I did not check the speaker and I think this is this is not the way to enter into this kind of of uh of business. So uh just to give you an example, this one is a technical report that will appears in the in the for coming months and I am the I am the editor of this document uh with with other colleague and uh more precisely is a collection of report and specification concerning smart contract and electronic ledger.

There are other two document that will follows in uh following is the TR542 and 541 which write more precisely the requirement uh for smart contract and and the electronic ledger. So uh just to give you a very quick a quick uh a quick review. So the bibliography of this document is quite exhaustive and uh and it takes it takes a lot of time to see how uh standardization organization are involved are interested in this topic.

Uh uh and of course they uh has they do not enter into uh contact with the main actors which uh which have seen during this week. So which is a little bit strange to me. uh also for the dictionary. So this document contain also a a huge dictionary uh which is the main one of the business of writing a standard is set up the dictionary to be to be used to be used in the next in the next uh in in in the full text. So in this document we also write are writing and finalizing uh an original chain of trust of course tailored spec sorry

specific specifically to smart contract running on electronic ledger which are uh identified in three phases uh essentially production of a smart contract, deployment of a smart contract and execution of a smart contract. uh all actors are finger out by signature. All relation between actor are finger out by signature and all artifact essentially all the object manipulated by actors are finger out by by signature. So this chain of trust is then translated into suitable requirement in the in the document allowing to track and trace responsibility in case of any problem.

Problems means hardware, software or network problems. So this is the basis for the normalization of the concept of a smart legal contract. So the smart legal contract as as you can um let's take solidity as an example. So this one is the hello world the smart legal contract hello world which uh contains okay it contain the hello world message and of course in in in comment you just write uh the the the the legal the legal terms are contained into into a comment into a comment which is not uh which is the factor uh the situation by now in in solidity. So as

you know the smart legal code code in solidity will be then compiled by assigned solidity compiler. The solidity specification language uh is defined by by the foundation but uh the specification language change change can change quite often and the compiler can change quite often which is not uh which is not very good. uh uh okay this situation is not uh uh is not only for solidity also uh also Python do not enter into standardization organization but C C++ Java and JavaScript accepted to write language specification start

that let's say in a standard in a standard way so uh at the point of the when you compile then uh you can have a different bite code produced by the compiler so uh using a different different opt optimization. So which byte code faithfully and semantically represented the original one? So the source code is there any equivalence between those two code the left and the right by now we cannot embed the publisher signature and so the chain of trust in some sense is is is broken. So when you compile you produce some bite code and so the bite code is is embedded is embedded uh does not the bite code do

not contain do not contain the some u the legal specification. So we try it but it is it is almost impossible to to embed in the bite code the comment. So the chain of trust is again broken. uh if you want to buy to build some uh uh algorithmic logic. So you can you can then uh as a senior software manager you can design a super nice algorithm uh to be coded in solidity and to be deployed in the Ethereum blockchain. Uh this guy will probably use flowchart as a formal language a little bit of mathematics some formulas like rain post condition and uh the question is how to embed this in the in the program in the object

code. At the moment the chain is broken. If we want to also to embed also the comment we have seen in the hello world. So the legal service can build this comment can write this comment. The comment are in the the legal text. The legal text is is embedded in some com comment but sorry the legal is embedded in the comment and uh we need also signature to avoid to broke the broke this chain of trust. So uh the signature so the programmer that translate the algorithm into some runnable code also need another signature. So the alteration of the algorithmic logic can be can be broken can broke the chain of trust. So uh all of these essentially

produce a kind of intermediate code hopefully understandable by a legal office and and the senior and the senior manager. So uh we need also another senior to put all together and sign the solidity comment as official built-in legal text. Actually you have also seen that legal text uh can be also represented as a web pointer that very often are broken. So uh this is something that a standardization of smart legal contract can take into account. Finally, the bite code is deployed on the blockchain and we need other signature in order to ensure that the underlying in the overlay network will not introduce will not introduce

the the sorry will not introduce the some some uh some error inside. So some noises in deploying the bite code and uh very very finally the bite code is executed on the signed AVM. But uh since the AVMs change very often uh these also this also need this also need to to to check and to add other signature. So uh long story short, we need a number of signature to write and deploy and execute the smart legal contract satisfying the chain of trust defined in our in our in our in our document as per the the forthcoming 8year technical technical report. So uh without enter

into the details of the chain of trust we design artifact some like a language specification compiler teams like language specification team compiler team for each of these item we have write a precise definition uh policies language specification policies compiler pro policies virtual machine policies etc and publishers uh source language publishers compiler, publisher, virtual machine publisher and and etc. And also finally actor the user first of all publisher the smart the publisher of the smart contract the provider and the deployer. Uh and finally very very finally we also write this uh when

entities actor artifact are set up we are we are ready to specify the chain of trust as a number of links every line is a link relation between the entities. Voila. So uh we have the production uh links, the deployment links and the execution links. Well, I think that if I have to resume if I have to resume this very quick and and fast presentation of why uh this community should enter into standardization and normalization. Uh I think that uh that if you can really defeat your enemy, have him as your friend. And so try to read this

normalization text by the European Commission. Try to read standardization text by uh standardization institution like Etsy, ISO, cell and ETU. Try to participate to standardization organization operation. So uh the participation is not uh is not uh if you are not uh European company is not a problem. Also Etsy for example also have Google and Apple and Facebook and Amazon. So it's really not is really not not a problem. So let's try to stay to stay connected uh and uh and I I think that uh I will be very happy to to give all the information on uh about how to

uh enter into this uh this kind of new activity at least what what I have seen that uh in this conference we always concentrate on technology and a little bit on properties and the main inventor of Ethereum yesterday was very two days ago was very motivating to me to say that we have to concentrate on properties on properties and uh technology and use the technology which is of course important I am a technologist I'm not I'm not a bureaucratic guy okay thank you very much but if if somebody have some question will be happy to answer did you know about this kind of a

document. No. So you see that uh I think that circle should apply. I don't understand why circle do not apply. Robin Hood the main sponsor of this conference should apply and should participate. Why they do not participate? Why they accept that the European Commission will fix some rules like data act that set up the definition of smart contract and electronic ledger. They do not call blockchain. they call electronic ledger which means that in a few in few uh years they will have the numeric the electronic the crypto euro uh this not distributed but uh with a with a client server all technology and uh and without

with a lot of with a very difficult possibility to set up bridges with the Ethereum community. So it's it's a win-win operation. So maybe it is boring if you are a a programmer but uh if you are something that think about the future maybe it's not. Great talk. I'm just curious. All right. Can you hear me? Yeah. Great.

Uh thanks for the talk. Um I'm just curious to know if this uh standard that you were talking about is it being considered um maybe you talked about and I missed I came in a bit late. Is it something being talked about in like uh the EU? Uh but what is it or is it something you're working on personally? The standard I mentioned that act is a law is a European law. Idas is a European law. So all the product have to respect those two law. So it's not written by me. I'm just I'm just a reader of those document that are no and standardization are document which are feed to European commission and the European Commission can decide to accept

the standard or not. So the final word is politics. The previous one the step one minus one is standardization organization. And and here we are in a in a setting where no standard are set up. The standard is not code. It's not baseline code. So standard is a a boring English text. Boring. Okay, let's say boring, but it's not boring at all. So it's an English text define the semantic of a programming language solidity. So the semant not a baseline implementation, not a baseline implementation of the virtual machine, the Bangkok virtual machine, the Rome virtual machine, the CAN virtual machine. So who who wrote this? Are they faithful with respect to

the specification of why the Ethereum foundation do not participate to this business? Voila. Okay. So, are you saying that these standards already exist? See, yeah. Even the one for smart contract. See see there is a plethora of document in my in the bibliography the the scrolling uh slide I have showed there is a lot of document a lot a lot of document and none of those document intersect with this community. Okay. So it's incredible. So you're saying that uh this community needs to start taking these things more seriously. Uh I see participating it see if I am here because also the via versa is true. So nobody pays me from I I am a

researcher. I am a researcher. My my business is to write scientific papers. I discover standardization and at the beginning they say oh my god it's very boring. No, it's not boring at all because you are just a step before the law. Step before Christine Lagard. I let me just and I finish. Of course, I don't let me just CC. I know I know I know that I am out of the but I think this No, I think I think that No, no, I think I am I am happy with this. I am healthy of this. So you you really have to participate. Uh

it's okay. I am happy. So Christine Lagard say that Bitcoin will never enter into the reserve of European Commission. Bitcoin will never enter into the reserve of of European Commission. Come on. Thank you so much. All right. [Applause] [Music]