Blockchains and Smart Contracts for Cryptocurrency : An Analysis of Their Functionality and Performance

Sammanfattning: Smart contracts are self-executing electronic contracts. Amongst its deployed applications in the digital world is providing a decentralized and transparent method for executing transactions of cryptocurrencies on blockchains. Our thesis aims to investigate the mechanisms influencing execution of smart contracts across different blockchain networks when it comes to transactions of their native tokens. With a focus on the Ethereum, Avalanche, Cardano, Chainlink, and Binance blockchain technologies, an experiment is conducted which involves transferring native tokens on each of the blockchains to obtain results of the speed of each of the transfers and their respective transaction costs. The developed problem statement revolves around understanding the blockchain characteristics and smart contract implementations that contribute to these results. Properties of smart contracts and blockchain networks are established, which form the qualitative data components of our research. Further, we perform an analysis and evaluation of the quantitative results of our experiment to form a connection between each of the blockchains’ qualitative properties and their respective performance. Architecture, gas limit, gas price, and network congestion are identified as key determinants of gas fees and transaction costs. The choice of consensus mechanism, block time, and scalability solutions also play a significant role in transaction speed and time to finality. We believe our discoveries contribute to enhancing the implementation of smart contracts in the context of cryptocurrencies.