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Understanding End-User Perception of Transfer Risks in Smart Contracts
Conference proceeding

Understanding End-User Perception of Transfer Risks in Smart Contracts

Yustynn Panicker, Ezekiel Soremekun, Sudipta Chattopadhyay, Sumei Sun and ACM
Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp.1-21
ACM Conferences
CHI 2025: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
26/04/2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713887

Abstract

Human-centered computing -- User studies Security and privacy -- Human and societal aspects of security and privacy Security and privacy -- Social aspects of security and privacy
Blockchain smart contracts are increasingly used in critical use cases (e.g., financial transactions). Thus, it is pertinent to ensure that their end-users understand risks in attempting token transfers. Addressing this, we investigate end-user comprehension of five transfer risks (e.g. the end-user being blacklisted) in the most popular Ethereum contract, USD Tether (USDT), and their prevalence in other top ERC-20 contracts. First, we conducted a user study investigating end-user comprehension of transfer risks in USDT with 110 participants. Second, we performed source code analysis of the next top (78) ERC-20 smart contracts to identify the prevalence of these risks. Study results show that the majority of end-users do not comprehend some real risks, and confuse real and fictitious risks. This holds regardless of participants’ self-rated programming and Web3 proficiency. Source code analysis demonstrates that examined risks are prevalent in up to 19.2% of the top ERC-20 contracts.

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