Systematic Mapping of Testing Smart Contracts for Blockchain Applications

In the last few years, the technological future becoming apparent by the introduction of smart contracts into mainstream technology, specifically in the development of Web3 and the metaverse. Smart contracts will play a vital role in the decentralization and autonomy of the day-to-day tasks that must be completed. Several literature reviews, considered secondary sources, highlight the current state of testing methods for smart contracts made for Blockchain applications. In this paper, we present the results from a systematic mapping study to give structure to the information found from primary sources. Systematic mapping is a well-known method to identify and categorize research papers in a field with an increasing amount of literature. For this systematic mapping, we searched for studies between 2017 and present-day (March 2022) and were able to find 303 results, from which 47 were selected, by specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, to be relevant to this study. A concept map was created from the information gathered from primary sources to the attributes such as research type, contribution type, blockchain network, smart contract language, development process, testing methods, and testing environment. We also categorized the trends and demographics found in the selected papers based on publication year, author's country, and more. The results of this systematic mapping showed that this field is very new and quickly increasing with new research. The researchers that are interested in this field could use the results found to create opportunities for their future work.