Smart contract applications within blockchain technology: A systematic mapping study

With the advent of blockchain, smart contracts have become one of the most sought-after technologies because of the high customisability they add to transactions. This has given rise to many smart contract applications in areas ranging from financial services, life sciences and healthcare to energy resources and voting. However, due to their infancy, smart contracts still pose many challenges that encumber the stakeholders who interact with them: users, developers and the organisations that are built on top of smart contracts. This study aims to contribute to the body of knowledge of smart contracts within blockchain technology. Based on a systematic mapping study, we offer a broad perspective on their problems and corresponding solutions, present the research trends within the area and compile the 64 papers identified, grouped by top publication sources, channels, methods and approaches. We conclude that, since 2016, there has been an increasing trend towards the publication of blockchain-based smart contract articles at conferences and journals, mainly reflecting experiments and presenting methods, tools and models. According to the results, the most commonly discussed problems and solutions in the literature are related to the security, privacy and scalability of blockchain and the programmability of smart contracts.