A Complete Formal Semantics of eBPF Instruction Set Architecture for Solana

We present the first formal semantics for the Solana eBPF bytecode language used in smart contracts on the Solana blockchain platform. Our formalization accurately captures all binary-level instructions of the Solana eBPF instruction set architecture. This semantics is structured in a small-step style, facilitating the formalization of the Solana eBPF interpreter within Isabelle/HOL. We provide a semantics validation framework that extracts an executable semantics from our formalization to test against the original implementation of the Solana eBPF interpreter. This approach introduces a novel lightweight and non-invasive method to relax the limitations of the existing Isabelle/HOL extraction mechanism. Furthermore, we illustrate potential applications of our semantics in the formalization of the main components of the Solana eBPF virtual machine.

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Publication Details

Journal
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Published
2025-04-09
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3720414
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Logic, programming, and type systems
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.48
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article

A Complete Formal Semantics of eBPF Instruction Set Architecture for Solana

Yongwang Zhao, Rui Chang, Shenghao Yuan, David Sanán et al.
1 citations
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Logic, programming, and type systems
2.48
article

A Complete Formal Semantics of eBPF Instruction Set Architecture for Solana

Yongwang Zhao, Rui Chang, Shenghao Yuan, David Sanán, Zhuoruo Zhang, Jiandong lu
article en
1 citations

Abstract

We present the first formal semantics for the Solana eBPF bytecode language used in smart contracts on the Solana blockchain platform. Our formalization accurately captures all binary-level instructions of the Solana eBPF instruction set architecture. This semantics is structured in a small-step style, facilitating the formalization of the Solana eBPF interpreter within Isabelle/HOL. We provide a semantics validation framework that extracts an executable semantics from our formalization to test against the original implementation of the Solana eBPF interpreter. This approach introduces a novel lightweight and non-invasive method to relax the limitations of the existing Isabelle/HOL extraction mechanism. Furthermore, we illustrate potential applications of our semantics in the formalization of the main components of the Solana eBPF virtual machine.

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming LanguagesVol. 9(OOPSLA1)
Singapore Institute of Technology (SG), Zhejiang University (CN)
Openalex Percentile: Top 11%
Logic, programming, and type systems
2.48
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A Complete Formal Semantics of eBPF Instruction Set Architecture for Solana — Yongwang Zhao, Rui Chang, et al. · Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS