Blockchain Support for Collaborative Business Processes

Blockchain technology provides basic building blocks to support the execution of collaborative business processes involving mutually untrusted parties in a decentralized environment. Several research proposals have demonstrated the feasibility of designing blockchain-based collaborative business processes using a high-level notation, such as the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), and thereon automatically generating the code artifacts required to execute these processes on a blockchain platform. In this paper, we present the conceptual foundations of model-driven approaches for blockchain-based collaborative process execution and we compare two concrete approaches, namely Caterpillar and Lorikeet

Towards a process-oriented analysis of blockchain data

Blockchains sequentially store the history of transactional information, in a virtually immutable and distributed way. Moreover, second-generation blockchains such as Ethereum are programmable environments, and every operation invocation towards the smart contracts corresponds to a transaction sequentially collated in the ledgers. They thus allow for the controlled enactment of multi-party processes as well as the immutable recording of their distributed execution. Despite the verification, tracking, and monitoring of such blockchain-enabled processes appears paramount, a formal and implemented framework encompassing those aspects is still a mostly unexplored research avenue. The talk revolves around the current state of the art, as well as the opportunities and challenges that arise when it comes to conducting a process-oriented analysis on data stemming from blockchains, from a representation and modelling perspective

DLT-based Regulatory Systems Dynamics

In this research, we examine the interplay between ‘actors’ and ‘agents’ in Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) systems. We identify regulatory interactions between off-chain agents setting the rules, as well as on-chain code as actors regulating the behavior of DLT users. We theorize about the relationship between agents and actors that mutually regulate each other in certain ways through the DLT system and identify the significant dimensions related to the trifecta in which the soft system agent sphere regulation of DLT is likely to interact with the hard system actor sphere regulation by DLT. By proposing the trifecta between DLT design, DLT protocol, and DLT use, we explain the relationship between these three and the role of DLT protocol as a mediator between DLT design and DLT use. Our research sheds light on the dynamics within DLT systems and the regulating forces at play from a systems’ thinking perspective.e

BLOCKCHAIN PLATFORM SELECTION AND SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FOR DECENTRALIZED EXCHANGE OF BUSINESS PROCESS MODELS

Modern organizations employing the Business Process Management (BPM) approach typically handle collections of hundreds or even thousands of business process models. Business process modeling stands as the central technology within the entire BPM methodology. In line with the BPM lifecycle, these models visually represent current organizational activities that necessitate improvement using various diagramming notations. These graphical business process models can subsequently be employed to analyze ongoing activities in the enterprise, identifying potential drawbacks or “weak spots” that hinder the company’s performance. Through business process models, organizations can modify the “virtual twins” of their organizational workflows, conduct simulations, and make informed decisions for business process improvement. Thus, business process models constitute the most valuable assets of the organization, conveying knowledge about ongoing activities and potentially encapsulating the best organizational or industry practices. The implementation of a centralized database for business process models can significantly benefit the entire organization, enhancing the efficiency of knowledge sharing and accumulation. However, centralized business process model repositories prove less efficient for inter-organizational knowledge exchange. Additionally, most business process models require significant person-hours for development and cannot be shared freely with competitors. The exchange of business process models should adhere to established mechanisms for managing valuable digital assets. Presently, Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT), especially Blockchain, have gained enormous popularity. Therefore, we can employ the principles of Blockchain technology and the cryptocurrency industry to create software for the Decentralized Exchange (DEX) of business process models. This study explores the selection of a DLT platform and the development of software for the decentralized exchange of business process models, utilizing asset tokenization and smart contract technologies

A Formal Specification Smart-Contract Language for Legally Binding Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

Blockchain- and smart-contract technology enhance the effectiveness and automation of business processes. The rising interest in the development of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) shows that blockchain technology has the potential to reform business and society. A DAO is an organization wherein business rules are encoded in smart-contract programs that are executed when specified rules are met. The contractual- and business semantics are sine qua non for drafting a legally-binding smart contract in DAO collaborations. Several smart-contract languages (SCLs) exist, such as SPESC, or Symboleo to specify a legally-binding contract. However, their primary focus is on designing and developing smart contracts with the cooperation of IT- and non-IT users. Therefore, this paper fills a gap in the state of the art by specifying a smart-legal-contract markup language (SLCML) for legal- and business constructs to draft a legally-binding DAO. To achieve the paper objective, we first present a formal SCL ontology to describe the legal- and business semantics of a DAO. Secondly, we translate the SCL ontology into SLCML, for which we present the XML schema definition. We demonstrate and evaluate our SLCML language through the specification of a real life-inspired Sale-of-Goods contract. Finally, the SLCML use-case code is translated into Solidity to demonstrate its feasibility for blockchain platform implementations

Applications of Blockchain in Business Processes: A Comprehensive Review

Blockchain (BC), as an emerging technology, is revolutionizing Business Process Management (BPM) in multiple ways. The main adoption is to serve as a trusted infrastructure to guarantee the trust of collaborations among multiple partners in trustless environments. Especially, BC enables trust of information by using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). With the power of smart contracts, BC enforces the obligations of counterparties that transact in a business process (BP) by programming the contracts as transactions. This paper aims to study the state-of-the-art of BC technologies by (1) exploring its applications in BPM with the focus on how BC provides the trust of BPs in their lifecycles; (2) identifying the relations of BPM as the need and BC as the solution with the assessment towards BPM characteristics; (3) discussing the up-to-date progresses of critical BC in BPM; (4) identifying the challenges and research directions for future advancement in the domain. The main conclusions of our comprehensive review are (1) the study of adopting BC in BPM has attracted a great deal of attention that has been evidenced by a rapidly growing number of relevant articles. (2) The paradigms of BPM over Internet of Things (IoT) have been shifted from persistent to transient, from static to dynamic, and from centralized to decentralized, and new enabling technologies are highly demanded to fulfill some emerging functional requirements (FRs) at the stages of design, configuration, diagnosis, and evaluation of BPs in their lifecycles. (3) BC has been intensively studied and proven as a promising solution to assure the trustiness for both of business processes and their executions in decentralized BPM. (4) Most of the reported BC applications are at their primary stages, future research efforts are needed to meet the technical challenges involved in interoperation, determination of trusted entities, confirmation of time-sensitive execution, and support of irreversibility