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Dalhousie Blockchain Lab

Smart Contract as a Service – SCaaS

Investigators: Drs. C. Liu & P. Bodorik, Dalhousie University, and Dr. D. Jutla, Saint Mary’s University

Dr. C. Liu

Dr. C. Liu

Dalhousie University

Fac. of Comp. Sci.

@DAL, |@Linkedin

Dr. D. Jutla

Dr. D. Jutla

Saint Mary’s University

Sobey School of Bus.

@SMU, @Linkedin

Dr. P. Bodorik

Dr. P. Bodorik

Dalhousie University

Fac. of Comp. Sci.

@DAL, @Linkedin


Problem: Writing smart contracts for the trade of goods and services and distributed finance by software developers is challenging and costly.

Our Solution – Smart Contracts as a Service (SCaaS)

  • Business Analyst (BA) represents the business processes in the trade activity by a model using the Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) with their business logic represented using the Decision Management Notation (DMN). Both tools are based on graphical diagramming approach.
  • BA uses our SCaaS tool (aka TABS tool in publications) to generate a smart contract and API from the BPMN and DMN models (see Notes) and deploys the smart contract on the target blockchain identified by the BA.
SCaaS Diagram

Benefits (see Exec-synopsis for more info)

  • Reduced cost and time to develop smart contracts while providing support for
  • Nested transactions to support multi-step collaborations
  • Privacy – participants see only data they need
  • Portability – smart contracts deployable on different blockchains
  • Interoperability – methods of smart contracts can interoperate
  • Sidechain processing – supported for cost reduction
  • Smart Contract Lifecycle support for bugs fixes and new features
  • Upgradability – support for amendments to fix bugs or add features
  • Repair – when smart contract execution cannot be completed
  • Compliance and reporting due to external and internal regulations…

Notes

  • OMG – Object Management Group standards organization
  • BPMN – Business Process Model and Notation
  • DMN – Decision Model Notation

BPMN and DMN are OMG standards created to be readily understood by all business stakeholders, technical or non-technical, such as analysts, developers, and managers.

TABS (Transforming Automatically BPMN models to Smart Contracts) – precursor to the SCaaS tool.