Some Blockchain Design Patterns for Overcoming Immutability, Chain-Boundedness, and Gas Fees

Abstract

Ethereum network has introduced an important innovation to blockchain technology that has deeply changed the world of blockchains and cryptocurrencies: Turing-complete smart contracts. Thanks to smart contracts it is possible to mint fungible and non-fungible tokens, manage decentralized organizations and offer services such as digital identity, advertisement, time commitments, decentralized exchanges, etc. However, smart contract development is not free from challenges. This paper analyses a set of design patterns that have been documented and groups them according to related smart contracts' weaknesses. Moreover, two novel solutions are presented in the form of design patterns. The first is a micro architecture that deals with a treasure reserve and aims at reducing gas consumption when having to update the code of a smart contract. The second presents a solution for packing bits each representing a Boolean value.