Kaya: A Testing Framework for Blockchain-based Decentralized Applications
This addresses testing challenges for developers and engineers working on DApps, but it is incremental as it builds on existing testing needs without introducing a new paradigm.
The paper tackles the problem of serious vulnerabilities in blockchain-based decentralized applications (DApps) due to inadequate testing by proposing Kaya, a testing framework that simplifies test case writing, pre-state setting, and log readability, with an experimental case demonstrating its potential to make DApp testing easier.
In recent years, many decentralized applications based on blockchain (DApp) have been developed. However, due to inadequate testing, DApps are easily exposed to serious vulnerabilities. We find three main challenges for DApp testing, i.e., the inherent complexity of DApp, inconvenient pre-state setting, and not-so-readable logs. In this paper, we propose a testing framework named Kaya to bridge these gaps. Kaya has three main functions. Firstly, Kaya proposes DApp behavior description language (DBDL) to make writing test cases easier. Test cases written in DBDL can also be automatically executed by Kaya. Secondly, Kaya supports a flexible and convenient way for test engineers to set the blockchain pre-states easily. Thirdly, Kaya transforms incomprehensible addresses into readable variables for easy comprehension. With these functions, Kaya can help test engineers test DApps more easily. Besides, to fit the various application environments, we provide two ways for test engineers to use Kaya, i.e., UI and command-line. Our experimental case demonstrates the potential of Kaya in helping test engineers to test DApps more easily.