[en] The emergence of the Ethereum blockchain and the rise of Turing-complete smart contracts have led to the creation of new solutions for ensuring different kinds of termination. Indeed, non-termination of a smart-contract execution within the blockchain network may have critical consequences, ranging from slow performance to a complete denial of service in the worst scenarios. Furthermore, smart contracts lack a global access-control mechanism and may be executed indefinitely over time, even after they have exhausted their purposes. Therefore, this requires, in some cases, developing solutions implementing “soft” and “hard” terminations—such as pausable, interruptions, and kill-switch mechanisms—as well as providing safe termination guarantees. In addition, termination is even more crucial when we consider legal aspects of smart contracts, including compliance with laws and regulations, such as the smart contract requirements proposed by the European Union Data Act. In this paper, we explore several mechanisms to ensure various kinds of termination in Ethereum, the most widely used blockchain. Moreover, we investigate similar mechanisms for traditional programming languages that can be applied to smart contracts in the blockchain context. The primary purpose of this study is to fill the gap caused by the lack of standards for these mechanisms and the emerging solutions typically proposed by practitioners.
Disciplines :
Computer science
Author, co-author :
Olivieri, Luca ; Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
PASETTO, Luca ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine (FSTM) > Department of Computer Science (DCS)
Negrini, Luca ; Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Ferrara, Pietro ; Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
External co-authors :
yes
Language :
English
Title :
An Overview of Termination in the Ethereum Blockchain
Publication date :
2026
Event name :
Blockchain Technology and Emerging Applications (Blocktea 2025)
Event place :
Venice, Ita
Event date :
18-09-2025 => 19-09-2025
Audience :
International
Main work title :
Blockchain Technology and Emerging Applications - 4th EAI International Conference, BlockTEA 2025, Proceedings
Editor :
Knottenbelt, William
Publisher :
Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Work partially supported by SERICS (PE00000014 - CUP H73C2200089001), iNEST (ECS00000043 \u2013 CUP H43C22000540006) projects funded by PNRR NextGeneration EU, and by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) (INTER/DFG/23/17415164/LODEX).
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