Search

We define a technique for analyzing updates of smart contracts balances due to transfers of digital assets. The analysis addresses a lightweight smart contract language and consists of a two-step translation. First, we define the input-output behaviors of smart contract functions by means of a simple functional language with static dispatch. Then we associate the terms of this intermediate language with cost equations that compute the loss or gain of digital assets. The resulting equations can be fed to an off-the-shelf cost analyzer to provide upper bounds to the loss or gain. Our analysis has been prototyped and we report its assessments and discuss extensions with additional features.

This tutorial provides a pragmatic introduction to the main functionalities of the Matita interactive theorem prover, offering a guided tour through a set of not so trivial examples in the field of software specification and verification.

We introduce the notion of nonuniform coercion, which is the promotion of a value of one type to an enriched value of a different type via a nonuniform procedure. Nonuniform coercions are a generalization of the (uniform) coercions known in the literature and they arise naturally when formalizing mathematics in an higher order interactive theorem prover using convenient devices like canonical structures, type classes or unification hints. We also show how nonuniform coercions can be naturally implemented at the user level in an interactive theorem prover that allows unification hints.

It is well known that general recursion cannot be expressed within Martin-Loef's type theory and various approaches have been proposed to overcome this problem still maintaining the termination of the computation of the typable terms. In this work we propose a new approach to this problem based on the use of inductively generated formal topologies.

We present a formalisation of a constructive proof of Lebesgue’s Dominated Convergence Theorem given by the Sacerdoti Coen and Zoli in [CSCZ]. The proof is done in the abstract setting of ordered uniformities, also introduced by the two authors as a simplification of Weber’s lattice uniformities given in [Web91, Web93]. The proof is fully constructive, in the sense that it is done in Bishop’s style and, under certain assumptions, it is also fully predicative. The formalisation is done in the Calculus of (Co)Inductive Constructions using the interactive theorem prover Matita [ASTZ07]. It exploits some peculiar features of Matita and an advanced technique to represent algebraic hierarchies previously introduced by the authors in [ST07]. Moreover, we introduce a new technique to cope with duality to halve the formalisation effort.

The paper describes the refinement algorithm for the Calculus of (Co)Inductive Constructions (CIC) implemented in the interactive theorem prover Matita. The refinement algorithm is in charge of giving a meaning to the terms, types and proof terms directly written by the user or generated by using tactics, decision procedures or general automation. The terms are written in an "external syntax" meant to be user friendly that allows omission of information, untyped binders and a certain liberal use of user defined sub-typing. The refiner modifies the terms to obtain related well typed terms in the internal syntax understood by the kernel of the ITP. In particular, it acts as a type inference algorithm when all the binders are untyped. The proposed algorithm is bi-directional: given a term in external syntax and a type expected for the term, it propagates as much typing information as possible towards the leaves of the term. Traditional mono-directional algorithms, instead, proceed in a bottom-up way by inferring the type of a sub-term and comparing (unifying) it with the type expected by its context only at the end. We propose some novel bi-directional rules for CIC that are particularly effective. Among the benefits of bi-directionality we have better error message reporting and better inference of dependent types. Moreover, thanks to bi-directionality, the coercion system for sub-typing is more effective and type inference generates simpler unification problems that are more likely to be solved by the inherently incomplete higher order unification algorithms implemented. Finally we introduce in the external syntax the notion of vector of placeholders that enables to omit at once an arbitrary number of arguments. Vectors of placeholders allow a trivial implementation of implicit arguments and greatly simplify the implementation of primitive and simple tactics.