The Monotone Priority System: Foundations of Contract-Specific Sequencing

Abstract: Modern blockchain applications benefit from the ability to specify sequencing constraints on the transactions that interact with them. This paper proposes a principled and axiomatically justified way of adding sequencing constraints on smart contract function calls that balances expressivity with the tractability of block production. Specifically, we propose a system in which contract developers are allowed to set an integer global priority for each of their calls, so long as that the call's chosen priority is no higher than the priority of any of its referenced calls. Block builders must then simply sequence transactions in priority order (from high to low priority), breaking ties however they would like. We show that this system is the unique system that satisfies five independent axioms.