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Enhancing Blockchain-Based Processes with Decentralized Oracles

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Business Process Management: Blockchain and Robotic Process Automation Forum (BPM 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 428))

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Abstract

The automation of business processes via blockchain-based systems allows for trust, reliability and accountability of execution. The link that connects modules that operate within the on-chain sphere and the off-chain world is key as processes often involve the handling of physical entities and external services. The components that create that link are named oracles. Numerous studies on oracles and their implementations are arising in the literature. Nevertheless, their availability, integrity and trust could be undermined if centralized architectures are adopted, as taking over an oracle could produce the effect of a supply-chain attack on the whole system. Solutions are emerging that overcome this issue by turning the architecture underneath the oracles into a distributed one. In this paper, we investigate the design and application of oracles, distinguishing their adoption for the in-flow or out-flow of information and according to the initiator of the exchange (hence, pull- or push-based).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.gnosis.io/ Accessed: July 14, 2021.

  2. 2.

    https://augur.net/ Accessed: July 14, 2021.

  3. 3.

    https://chain.link/ Accessed: July 14, 2021.

  4. 4.

    The implemented prototypes of the oracles used in the experiments are available at: https://github.com/DavideBasile1810355/Decentralized_Oracles/.

  5. 5.

    Rospten explorer: https://ropsten.etherscan.io/. Accessed: July 14, 2021.

  6. 6.

    Solid Web: https://solid.mit.edu. Accessed: July 14, 2021.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the reviewers for their precious feedback. The work of C. Di Ciccio was partially funded by the MIUR under grant “Dipartimenti di eccellenza 2018–2022” of the Department of Computer Science at Sapienza and by the Sapienza research project “SPECTRA”.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Davide Basile, Valerio Goretti & Claudio Di Ciccio

  2. Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria

    Sabrina Kirrane

Authors
  1. Davide Basile
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  2. Valerio Goretti
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  3. Claudio Di Ciccio
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  4. Sabrina Kirrane
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claudio Di Ciccio .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería, Seville, Spain

    José González Enríquez

  2. IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Søren Debois

  3. German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Peter Fettke

  4. Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Pierluigi Plebani

  5. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Inge van de Weerd

  6. TU Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Ingo Weber

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Basile, D., Goretti, V., Di Ciccio, C., Kirrane, S. (2021). Enhancing Blockchain-Based Processes with Decentralized Oracles. In: González Enríquez, J., Debois, S., Fettke, P., Plebani, P., van de Weerd, I., Weber, I. (eds) Business Process Management: Blockchain and Robotic Process Automation Forum. BPM 2021. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 428. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85867-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85867-4_8

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