Challenges with Solidity in Decentralized Applications

This article discusses the challenges faced with the use of decentralized applications in smart contracts, with a specific focus on the problem of Solidity. It explores the vulnerabilities and issues associated with smart contracts and proposes solutions to improve security and reliability.

Ethereum’s solidity
Name
Institution
Professor
Course
Date

Introduction
Decentralized Applications (Dapps) have been embraced due to their nature of resilient in
supporting high traffic systems. Important to note is that decentralized applications depend on
smart contracts to accomplish most of its essential processes. Despite being a necessary factor in
Dapps operational processes, it has been observed that smart contracts are prone to hackers, code
bugs and errors (Panisi, 2017). Considering smart contracts facilitate some of the complex
ethereum operations, minor mistakes during system development results in very dire
consequences such as security breaches and other transaction-related implications. This article
focus on identifying some of the challenges faced with the use of decentralized applications in
smart contracts (Cong & He, 2019). In this regard, solidity has been identified as one of the
stubbing blocks on a successful implementation of ethereum network. Solidity problem has
greatly been attributed to the lack of skilled and experienced system developers with the
capability to audit and optimize smart contracts.
Existing decentralized application
The review of the other decentralized applications shall be analyzed to unearth challenges
facing current decentralized applications. There have been payment admission challenges with
adoption of decentralized application. It has been quite challenging to acquire that single project
token to make use of the platform (Destefanis et al., 2018). Similarly, the aspect of
cryptocurrency volatility has been a significant issue on Dapps. Since the anticipated price of the
token is projected to rise by day, many holders have not been willing to dispose of. In an ideal
situation, the holding of good without trading make businesses slag. In this case, Decentralized
applications find it difficult to grow for even a single user base. Having noted some of the issues
facing existing Dapps, smart contracts cannot be an exception as they support complex

operations in blockchain technology. A good example of poorly designed smart contracts
identified from a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and a smart parity which has
been on use by parity. The vulnerability was exploited by hackers resulting in loss of ether
worthy $ 169 million. The idea behind in smart contracts was to make token owners responsible
for transfer (Zheng, Xie, Dai, Chen & Wang, 2018). The main change has been determining the
real ownership of the tokens. Beside security breaches, decentralized applications have been
facing high cost as processing fees. The charges are dependent on both the complexity of the
smart contract and network traffic during the execution of the subjected contract.
Mission statement
Bring together skilled, competent and experienced system developers who understand the current
technology challenges.
Vision statement
Making smart contracts secure and reliable in the blockchain technology market.
Decentralized vs. centralized applications
Development of the system can either be centralized or decentralized depending on the
use of any system. Decentralized applications are implemented in such a way that they can run
from Peer to Peer (P2P) networked computers rather than a single dedicated computer (Mohanta,
Panda & Jena, 2018). Running of Dapps was designed to be able to run concurrently on different
entities over the internet. With Dapps, it is possible to avoid a single point failure which
interrupts productivity in many organizations using centralized systems. Similarly, Dapps offers
an opportunity for any other application to be able to run on them. Such ability has not been
available with centralized applications which do not provide open opportunities run on their

platforms. Additionally, Dapps are regarded as more meritocratic as it offers less traffic to
application users and economics of scale are distributed equally. This is central to centralized
applications which makes the system more unreliable due to its inefficient. Further, centralized
applications are designed to operate from a single server which handles all the tasks. All
applications connect to a single entity and submits their requests to a single operating entity
instead of performing their requests individually (Tikhomirov, 2017). This is contrary to
decentralized applications which have several nodes ready to receive and process requests
randomly.
Advantages of decentralized applications
One of the notable benefits of a decentralized system is that there is no single point
failure. Since application is not dependent on a specific server to receive and sent responses to
clients, responses are routed equally to all available nodes. In case a single node fails, users
would not be affected because any other idle node would handle requests. In this regard,
performance is awe-inspiring as it does not face traffic related issues (Golosova & Romanovs,
2018). Next, Dapps are more scalable because they involve the addition of more nodes to the
already existing ones. If existing nodes are believed to be overloaded, more nodes are added to
the system to increase its capability. Similarly, decentralized applications offer increased privacy
on sharing of data because data signals originate from different nodes rather than a single server.
The concept of having multiple nodes running the same application makes it difficult for hackers
to tracker the origin of the signal.
Disadvantages of the decentralized applications

Besides al important benefits associated with decentralized applications, the following
drawbacks are possible; more powerful machines are required to handle all requested and
responses in a short period. Increase in the number of devices means a higher cost of
maintenance as well as purchase. Similarly, running on many machines make the entire
decentralized system more prone to operational technology issues (Golosova & Romanovs,
2018). Increase in operational challenges means there would be an increased burden on
technology resources such as Information Technology experts and digitization of tracking
systems. This implicates more resource persons dedicated to supporting the entire system.
Choice of solidity problem
Security of the system in the modern technology world has been a great challenge which
has been evolving. According to Wohrer & Zdun (2018), smart contracts runs some of the
modern technology applications such as cryptocurrency which is very valuable as real money.
With new technology and new security breaches coming by day, security should be a concern to
all stakeholders. The choice of the problem was necessitated by the need to come up with a more
effective solution to issues facing smart contracts. The resolution highlights factors that should
be considered to secure smart contracts from fraud and eliminate some unnecessary bugs. The
solution to solidity on code errors and bugs would be solved by bringing a group of skilled and
experienced programmers and system testers. Similarly, security breaches related to
cybersecurity can be resolved by having a common platform developed under common
programming language (Eskandari, Clark, Sundaresan & Adham, 2017). This should be able to
harmonize operational processes such as security and performance aspects.
Preventing system misuse and rewarding best application users

Information systems are prone to manipulation by system users both technical and non-
technical. In most cases, system misuse is attributed to advanced technical users such as hackers
as well as part of system management employees. System misuse range from suppressing it with
wrong data to create unnecessary traffic to database injections (Eskandari, Clark, Sundaresan &
Adham, 2017). For cybersecurity-related cases, the system would be secured by encrypting and
storing access information from other sets of data. Such practices have proved successful in
MasterCard numbers and password protection strategy. Besides protecting system access data,
operational data should also be encrypted and replicated in many other operational data centers
to make it secure and easy to recover in case of failure and data breaches. In this regard, during
application rollout, the application should be tested to make sure it can withstand operational
stress. Certified ethical engineers should test ethical hacking to exploit any vulnerability that
might expose the system to system breaches. In this regard, testing should be tested in house and
even release it to external security experts for scrutiny. Similarly, system users should be
recognized for their efforts to support the smooth running of the application. To identify
application users with excellent performance, management should focus on areas such as support
issues, technical advancements, and performance (Fairfield, 2014). The application can be
designed in such a way that users accumulate some points while undertaking several activities on
the system. This reports can be used by different stakeholders such as system developers, testers,
management of the system and information system security experts.
Conclusion
Cryptocurrency has been gaining more attention from several quarters from the
technology sector without understanding underlying challenges. From the analysis of the existing
Dapps, it has been noted that several security issues should be addressed. Smart contracts have

not been an exception as observed from DAO and smart parity smart contracts. Bugs and poor
system development have been cited as one of the significant challenges facing smart contracts.
Decentralized systems have proved more resilient than centralized systems in a couple of ways
such as availability, privacy, and scalability. Besides, Dapps have been associated with complex
IT solutions which may require more resources to manage growing needs. The solution proposal
has been necessitated by the need to come up with a reliable solution that can address the solidity
issue in smart contracts. The proposed system would be prevented from misuse by creating
applications which are error free and can withstand induced stress. Users of the report are;
system developers, system testers and application security experts auditors.
References
Cong, L. W., & He, Z. (2019). Blockchain disruption and smart contracts. The Review of
Financial Studies, 32(5), 1754-1797.
Destefanis, G., Marchesi, M., Ortu, M., Tonelli, R., Bracciali, A., & Hierons, R. (2018). Smart
contracts vulnerabilities: a call for blockchain software engineering. In 2018
International Workshop on Blockchain Oriented Software Engineering (IWBOSE) (pp. 19-25).
Eskandari, S., Clark, J., Sundaresan, V., & Adham, M. (2017). On the feasibility of decentralized
derivatives markets. In International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data
Security (pp. 553-567).
Fairfield, J. A. (2014). Smart contracts, Bitcoin bots, and consumer protection. Washington and
Lee Law Review Online, 71(2), 36.
Golosova, J., & Romanovs, A. (2018). The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Blockchain
Technology. In 2018 IEEE 6th Workshop on Advances in Information, Electronic and
Electrical Engineering (AIEEE) (pp. 1-6).
Mohanta, B. K., Panda, S. S., & Jena, D. (2018). An Overview of Smart Contract and Use Cases
in Blockchain Technology. In 2018 9th International Conference on Computing,
Communication and Networking Technologies (ICCCNT) (pp. 1-4).
Panisi, F. (2017). Blockchain and Smart Contracts: FinTech Innovations to Reduce the Costs of
Trust. Available at SSRN 3066543.

Tikhomirov, S. (2017). Ethereum: state of knowledge and research perspectives. In International
Symposium on Foundations and Practice of Security (pp. 206-221).
Wohrer, M., & Zdun, U. (2018). Smart contracts: security patterns in the ethereum ecosystem
and solidity. In 2018 International Workshop on Blockchain Oriented Software Engineering
(IWBOSE) (pp. 2-8).
Zheng, Z., Xie, S., Dai, H. N., Chen, X., & Wang, H. (2018). Blockchain challenges and
opportunities: a survey. International Journal of Web and Grid Services, 14(4), 352-375.