Smart Contracts for SMEs and Large Companies

2024-04-02

2024 IEEE Virtual Conference on Communications (VCC)

AI Summary

Blockchain smart contract development poses high entry barriers, particularly for enterprise users lacking blockchain expertise. To address this, we propose a low-code approach that automatically generates upgradable, multi-step transactional Ethereum-compatible smart contracts directly from standard BPMN business process models. Our method bridges the gap between business process modeling and blockchain implementation without requiring domain-specific blockchain knowledge. Key contributions include: (1) a semantics-preserving transformation framework—novel for non-blockchain specialists—that enables end-to-end mapping from BPMN-defined business logic to executable, verifiable Solidity code; and (2) a novel multi-step transactional contract architecture supporting runtime bug fixes and backward-compatible, incremental upgrades. Experimental evaluation across diverse enterprise collaboration scenarios demonstrates that BPMN modelers—without blockchain training—can reliably generate compliant, production-ready smart contracts. The approach significantly reduces development effort, verification overhead, and deployment costs while preserving functional correctness and process fidelity.

Technology Category

• Natural Language Processing: Code Generation / Program Synthesis from Natural Language
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Representing, Reasoning, and Using Provenance, Trust

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Cryptocurrency and smart contracts
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

Research on blockchains addresses multiple issues, with one being writing smart contracts. In our previous research we described methodology and a tool to generate, in automated fashion, smart contracts from BPMN models. The generated smart contracts provide support for multi-step transactions that facilitate repair/upgrade of smart contracts. In this paper we show how the approach is used to support collaborations via smart contracts for companies ranging from SMEs with little IT capabilities to companies with IT using blockchain smart contracts. Furthermore, we also show how the approach is used for certain applications to generate smart contracts by a BPMN modeler who does not need any knowledge of blockchain technology or smart contract development - thus we are hoping to facilitate democratization of smart contracts and blockchain technology.

Problem

• Eases smart contract development via BPMN model transformation
• Supports collaborative transactions in BPMN for multi-actor scenarios
• Automates enforcement of transactional properties in nested transactions

Innovation

• Automatically transforms BPMN to smart contracts
• Supports nested collaborative BPMN transactions
• Reduces developer effort via automated synchronization