# Designing Secure Ethereum Smart Contracts: A Finite State Machine Based Approach

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.09327 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09327/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 26 Nov 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [A formal model for ledger management systems based on contracts and temporal logic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.15212/) (2021)
- [An end-to-end agentic pipeline for smart contract translation and quality evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13808/) (2026)
- [SmartEval: A Benchmark for Evaluating LLM-Generated Smart Contracts from Natural Language Specifications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09610/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The adoption of blockchain-based distributed computation platforms is growing fast. Some of these platforms, such as Ethereum, provide support for implementing smart contracts, which are envisioned to have novel applications in a broad range of areas, including finance and Internet-of-Things. However, a significant number of smart contracts deployed in practice suffer from security vulnerabilities, which enable malicious users to steal assets from a contract or to cause damage. Vulnerabilities present a serious issue since contracts may handle financial assets of considerable value, and contract bugs are non-fixable by design. To help developers create more secure smart contracts, we introduce FSolidM, a framework rooted in rigorous semantics for designing con- tracts as Finite State Machines (FSM). We present a tool for creating FSM on an easy-to-use graphical interface and for automatically generating Ethereum contracts. Further, we introduce a set of design patterns, which we implement as plugins that developers can easily add to their contracts to enhance security and functionality.