Something good is always possible: testing smart contracts with QuickCheck
summary
A QuickCheck-based framework for Cardano Plutus contracts generates random sequences of wallet actions, models contract state, and shrinks failing runs; it finds real crashes (one failure required 10 tests and 6 shrinks) and exposes missing preconditions (start-once, token ownership). The example builds a passworded guessing game that forges a game token, shows off-chain/on-chain testing with Plutus and QuickCheck, adds a small strategy language to prove a liveness goal, and runs 100 (typically 10,000) tests to validate that recovery always works.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Smart contract testing intro
- 1:56Cardano and Haskell matter
- 4:02Cardano smart contracts
- 7:08On-chain vs off-chain testing
- 9:37QuickCheck for smart contracts
- 13:24Guessing game contract model
- 15:08First test failure and shrinking
- 17:38Adding preconditions
- 20:08Beyond safety: liveness tests
- 22:35Goal-reaching strategies
- 26:28Recovery strategy refinement
- 28:57New PBT opportunities
- 29:20Closing remarks and Q&A
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