  Blockchain systems have gained substantial traction recently, partly due to
the potential of decentralized immutable mediation of economic activities.
Ethereum is a prominent example that has the provision for executing stateful
computing scripts known as Smart Contracts. These smart contracts resemble
traditional programs, but with immutability being the core differentiating
factor. Given their immutability and potential high monetary value, it becomes
imperative to develop high-quality smart contracts. Software metrics have
traditionally been an essential tool in determining programming quality. Given
the similarity between smart contracts (written in Solidity for Ethereum) and
object-oriented (OO) programming, OO metrics would appear applicable. In this
paper, we empirically evaluate inheritance-based metrics as applied to smart
contracts. We adopt this focus because, traditionally, inheritance has been
linked to a more complex codebase which we posit is not the case with Solidity
based smart contracts. In this work, we evaluate the hypothesis that, due to
the differences in the context of smart contracts and OO programs, it may not
be appropriate to use the same interpretation of inheritance based metrics for
assessment.
