Smart Flow: A Decentralized ID-Based Smart Contract Workflow Architecture

Abstract

Blockchain technology has attracted a lot of attention in recent years as an effective way to innovate business processes. Using smart contracts as intermediaries to control collaborative processes can provide a trusted way for untrusted parties to execute tasks. However, efforts to integrate this technology into business process management systems are at an early stage and face several critical challenges. In this paper, we propose a decentralized ID-based smart contract workflow architecture named Smart Flow. Smart Flow is the first attempt to apply decentralized identifiers to a workflow management system. It enables a blockchain collaboration framework that supports secure workflows by restricting access to only authorized and authenticated parties. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness and benefits of the proposed workflow architecture, we present the results of an evaluation study we performed using a used car trading system scenario.