Sustainable blockchain-enabled services: Smart contracts

Abstract

This paper introduces some of the interdependent components within the multifaceted solution our team is developing towards accelerating the functionality, complexity and versatility of blockchain-enabled services. The focus here is particularly on introducing and bringing together selected individual components of the solution to achieve a synergistic effect in expanding the functionality of blockchain-enforced smart contracts. The contributions of this paper include: (i) proposing a method for automated management of contracts with hierarchical conditionality structures through an hierarchy of intelligent agents and the use of hierarchical cryptographic key-pairs; (ii) proposing a method for efficient and secure matching and transfer of smart-contract underlyings (entities) among disparate smart contracts/subcontracts; (iii) proposing a method for producing an hierarchy of common secrets to facilitate hierarchical communication channels of increased security, and applying this method both in the context of method (i) and method (ii); and (iv) proposing the use of distributed hash tables DHT in building secure and optimized repositories in the context of method (i) and in the context method (ii), where the former involves a DHT repository of smart contracts and the latter involves a DHT repository of entities underlying smart contracts that are being exchanged among different smart contracts and subcontracts. The smart-contract focused methods introduced in this paper contribute to the overall goal towards a sustainable adaptive mechanism for processing evolving volumes, versatility, and complexity of blockchain transactions, traffic, and services. Blockchain-enabled services are efficient, secure, automated, and allowing worldwide distribution of resources. They present a more efficient and sustainable alternative to current service infrastructures within a range of domains, particularly the legal and financial domains. They also set a sustainable infrastructure for emerging Internet-of-things services.