Smart flow: a provenance-supported smart contract workflow architecture

Abstract

As blockchain technology continues to mature, its potential for use in workflow systems has garnered considerable attention. However, the adoption of blockchain-based workflow systems in practical contexts presents a range of challenges that need to be addressed. Among the challenges encountered in the context of workflow systems, one particularly significant hurdle relates to establishing trust among the various actors participating in the workflow. To address this concern, we introduce a workflow architecture that incorporates provenance support and decentralized identifiers. This strategic combination aids in identifying what actions by whom led to the creation of the data being passed on within the workflow. The addition of provenance support within our framework results in a notable enhancement of traceability, accountability, and transparency throughout the workflow processes, which ultimately improves the overall trustworthiness of the system. The key novelty of this study can be found at the provenance-enabled blockchain workflow architecture that remains unexplored until now. The proposed solution is supported by a realistic use-case scenario portraying a used-car business which has undergone testing and measurements benchmarked against comparable frameworks and solutions. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.