*Obsidian: A Safer Blockchain Programming Language*

Software Engineering Seminar
Computer Science Department

Monday, January 22, 10am, ENGR 4201



*Michael Coblenz*

Carnegie Mellon University



*Abstract*

Blockchain platforms have captured the attention of a wide variety of
industries, including finance, health care, shipping, and many others.
Unfortunately, recent security vulnerabilities in blockchain-based programs
have enabled the theft of over $70 million. Currently, blockchain programs
are written in programming languages that lack important safety properties,
resulting in many different kinds of bugs in software that handle
high-stakes transactions. We propose Obsidian, a typestate-oriented
programming language that uses linear types to provide strong safety
guarantees that are appropriate for the application domain of blockchain.
We are developing Obsidian using a new, user-centered design methodology so
that programmers will be able to write Obsidian programs more effectively
than if we designed it in isolation. In this talk, we will discuss both the
new language and design methodology. In the future, we hope many different
kinds of languages will take advantage of the language design techniques we
are using in Obsidian.



*Biography*

Michael Coblenz is a fourth-year PhD student in the Computer Science
Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He was previously a Senior
Software Engineer at Apple, where he worked on Numbers, Apple’s spreadsheet
software. His research is at the intersection of Human-Computer
Interaction, Software Engineering, and Programming Languages, and focuses
on developing techniques for designing and evaluating programming languages
in which programmers can be more effective at writing software.



*Contact*

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