Etherscan, the explorer of the Ethereum blockchain, has unveiled a tool for analysing smart contracts using artificial intelligence (AI): Code Reader. This new feature has been developed using technology from OpenAI, the company behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Etherscan unveils “Code Reader”, its new AI-based tool
Etherscan, the popular Ethereum blockchain (ETH) explorer, has unveiled a new feature to help analyse smart contracts using artificial intelligence (AI): Code Reader.
Code Reader (Beta)
Leverage the power of AI to seamlessly learn about any smart contract source code! ✨ pic.twitter.com/GTbULisudk
– Etherscan (@etherscan) June 19, 2023
Here, the technology used is that of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. As shown in the screenshot below, the tool breaks down into a number of fields that need to be completed:
Etherscan’s Code Reader AI
First of all, you need an API key with the necessary rights and the address of the smart contract to be studied. Code Reader will then retrieve the various source code files, and you can choose which to analyse specifically.
The prompt section allows you to give instructions to the tool, for example to explain how a particular mechanism works in an application using the smart contract.
Factors to take into account
Before using Code Reader, there are a few things to consider. The most important is that the answers are generated by the OpenAI model, not Etherscan, which means that the accuracy of the answers provided also depends on the limitations of this AI. What’s more, the accuracy of these results will also depend on the quality of the prompt that has been written.
In this way, the tool plays the role of an assistant, enabling anyone wishing to analyse code or understand how it works to save time in their research, without replacing the work of a developer. What’s more, it’s still a beta version, with room for improvement.
Be that as it may, Code Reader should nevertheless offer some interesting features for the community, in particular to help the various players analyse the security of Ethereum’s various decentralised applications, for example.
Following on from the forthcoming integration of a plug-in for interacting with the Solana (SOL) blockchain from ChatGPT, this is yet another case study demonstrating the possible synergies between artificial intelligence and the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
