An Approach to Validation of Business-Oriented Smart Contracts Based on Process Mining

Abstract

Enterprises are confronted with a highly competitive and fast-changing business environment resulting in an increasing level of cooperation between organizations. Cross-organizational processes (CBPs) aim to achieve an agreement between organizations at the process level in such an environment. An application of smart contracts and blockchain brings the unprecedented capability to execute CBPs in decentralized multi-peer environments and without central authorities to govern the workflow. However, the application of blockchain introduces various challenges due to the immutable nature of blockchain's transaction data and the specific development and deployment life-cycle of smart contracts. In this position paper, we propose a high-level platform-independent framework for monitoring and validation of smart contracts utilizing process mining techniques. The main purpose of such a framework will be to support process engineers in the detection of nonconforming behavior, resolving detected discrepancies, and improving smart contracts.