Sustainable blockchain-enabled services: Smart contracts

Abstract

This chapter contributes to evolving the versatility and complexity of blockchain-enabled services through extending the functionality of blockchain-enforced smart contracts. The contributions include: (i) 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) a method for efficient and secure matching and transfer of smartcontract underlyings (entities) among disparate smart contracts/subcontracts; (iii) a method for producing an hierarchy of common secrets to facilitate hierarchical communication channels of increased security in the context of smart contracts/subcontracts/underlyings; and (iv) a method for building secure and optimized repositories through distributed hash tables in the context of contracts/ subcontracts/underlyings. These methods help providing services that allow both narrower and worldwide reach and distribution of resources. The longevity of the blockchain technology is achieved through continuous innovation. Blockchain-enabled services are potentially an efficient, secure, automated, and cost-effective alternative or complement to current service infrastructures in a range of domains (legal, medical, financial, government, IoT).Keywords-hierarchical smart-contract conditionality, hierarchical cryptographic/encription keys, transferring smartcontract underlyings, sustainable blockchain-enabled services. I.▫ Challenges in validating and verifying smart contracts (SM) are recognized in [1], considering that SM may encode legal contracts written in natural language. The current paper addresses these challenges in Section II, and proposes a contract codification model along with a method for automated SM management, validation, and verification, enforced through the blockchain.

Deploying Blockchain Smart Contracts Using XQuery Language

“…Smart contracts are more trustworthy by having the property of immutable, which means no one can modify/edit or delete the data without meeting the permissions, and this can be automatically encrypted the rules. In short, the smart contract simplifies the transaction happening in the Blockchain and makes it easier to perform [18,19]. For example, assume the Smart contract in healthcare, where managing patients' health information, records, and data has become a large task for many practitioners.…”

Blockchain Utilization in Healthcare: Key Requirements and Challenges

“…For example, a smart contract for banking transactions or financial purposes includes all the terms and conditions agreed by each stakeholder available in that process. The traditional contracts are considered to be lengthy and experienced as a resource consuming process that is made either in form of writing or any actions [15], [16]. In contrast, smart contracts are computer based digital programs which are self-executive when the required terms are fulfilled.…”

“…Smart contracts are more trustworthy by having the property of immutable which means no one can modify /edit or delete the patient data without the patient's permission and this can be automatically encrypt the protocol/rules. The Smart Contract simplifies the transaction happening in the Blockchain and makes it easier to perform [16], [35].…”

“…Blockchain for healthcare also uses the concept of smart contracts which enables trustless features among various entities in the system. Smart contracts consist of computer program that presents the agreements and principles on which all the involved parties in the network agrees upon and therefore no trusted third party is required [15], [16]. Blockchain based healthcare system are also proposed in a way that they support the interoperability feature in the system.…”

The Evolution of Embedding Metadata in Blockchain Transactions

“…Among the innovative uses of P2SH-embedded metadata are the tokenization of assets (tangible, intangible, divisible, and non-divisible), the blockchain-enforcement of smart contracts, the blockchain-recorded progress through the complex conditionality structure of a smart contract, the efficient blockchainregistered exchange of various tokenized entities underlying smart contracts, and the blockchain-recorded access links and access privileges to off-chain databases. [8] Such databases can be Distributed Hash Table (DHT) databases that store smart-contract templates, or conditions for the exchange of and the characteristics of entities underlying smart contracts, or software programs implementing intelligent agents capable of controlling various types of smart contracts. The described utilization of embedded-metadata serves as middleware that supports the development and execution of any specific smart contract.…”