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Process Mining on Blockchain Data: A Case Study of Augur

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Business Process Management (BPM 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12875))

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Abstract

Through its smart contract capabilities, blockchain has become a technology for automating cross-organizational processes on a neutral platform. Process mining has emerged as a popular toolbox for understanding processes and how they are executed in practice. While researchers have recently created techniques for the challenging task of extracting authoritative data from blockchains to facilitate the analysis of blockchain applications using process mining, as yet there has been no clear evaluation of the usefulness of process mining on blockchain data. With this paper, we close that gap with an in-depth case study of process mining on the popular Ethereum application Augur, a prediction and betting marketplace. We were able to generate value-adding insights for application-redesign and security analysis, as validated by the application’s chief architect and revealed blind spots in Augur’s white paper.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://augur.net/, accessed 2021-03-05.

  2. 2.

    https://twitter.com/AugurProject/status/1245715269042888706, accessed 2021-03-14.

  3. 3.

    https://www.augur.net/blog/augur-v2-launch/, accessed 2021-03-14.

  4. 4.

    https://github.com/ChrisKlinkmueller/Ethereum-Logging-Framework.

  5. 5.

    https://github.com/ingo-weber/dapp-data.

  6. 6.

    https://github.com/AugurProject/augur-core, accessed 2021-03-19.

  7. 7.

    https://themajority.report/market/0x67ef420c045f3561d11ef94b24da7e2010650cc3, accessed 2021-03-05.

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Acknowledgments

We are very thankful for the input of Paul Gebheim, chief architect at the Augur Project. We would also like to thank Martin Rebesky for writing the first version of the ELF manifest to extract an Augur event log.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Software and Business Engineering, Technische Universitaet Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Richard Hobeck & Ingo Weber

  2. Data61, CSIRO, Sydney, Australia

    Christopher Klinkmüller & H. M. N. Dilum Bandara

  3. RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Wil M. P. van der Aalst

Authors
  1. Richard Hobeck
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  2. Christopher Klinkmüller
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  3. H. M. N. Dilum Bandara
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  4. Ingo Weber
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  5. Wil M. P. van der Aalst
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Richard Hobeck .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC, Australia

    Artem Polyvyanyy

  2. NICTA Queensland Research Lab, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Moe Thandar Wynn

  3. Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Amy Van Looy

  4. Institut fur Datenbanken, Info System, Universitat Ulm, Ulm, Germany

    Manfred Reichert

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Hobeck, R., Klinkmüller, C., Bandara, H.M.N.D., Weber, I., van der Aalst, W.M.P. (2021). Process Mining on Blockchain Data: A Case Study of Augur. In: Polyvyanyy, A., Wynn, M.T., Van Looy, A., Reichert, M. (eds) Business Process Management. BPM 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12875. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85469-0_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85469-0_20

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-85469-0

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