Building a blockchain language: Marlowe

Marlowe is a high-level, domain-specific language (DSL) for writing financial contracts on blockchain. It is defined by an executable reference semantics in Haskell, and is implemented on the EUTxO-based Cardano blockchain. We will introduce Marlowe and describe its semantics and implementation and give examples, including some from the ACTUS standard for financial contracts.

We will reflect on the development of Marlowe, the design rationale underlying it, and the tools that we have built to support Marlowe users and developers. In some ways these are similar to tools for other DSLs, but others reflect the particular blockchain context.

Professor Simon Thompson graduated from the University of Cambridge, and received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Oxford in 1984. He has been a lecturer at the University of Kent since 1983 and a full professor since 2000. From 2002 to 2010, he was head of the School of Computing; then worked as a research director between 2011 and 2015, and as a chief innovation officer from 2015 to 2018. He is a prominent researcher in the field of Functional Programming, and the author of several widely known books and of about 150 scientific articles.

Since 2007 he has been collaborating with the Department of Programming Languages and Compilers of the Faculty of Informatics, Eötvös Loránd University in the field of R&D&I as well as in education. Students of the Faculty of Informatics, Eötvös Loránd University have had the opportunity to participate in the research conducted by Prof. Thompson since 2007, and for a year he has been a part-time research professor at the Faculty. For almost two decades, Prof. Simon Thompson has been playing a key role in increasing scientific efficiency and improving the supply of researchers at the Faculty of Informatics, Eötvös Loránd University. 

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