A blockchain-based pattern for confidential and pseudo-anonymous contract enforcement

TL;DR

This paper presents a blockchain pattern that enables confidential and pseudo-anonymous enforcement of legal contracts by combining on-chain smart contracts with off-chain logic, enhancing privacy and auditability.

Contribution

It introduces a novel pattern for legal contract enforcement that maintains confidentiality and pseudonymity while leveraging blockchain's audit capabilities.

Findings

Pattern guarantees pseudonymity and data confidentiality.

Ensures audit trail for misbehavior or errors.

Applicable to real-life use cases like refrigerated goods transportation.

Abstract

Blockchain has been praised for its capacity to hold data in a decentralized and tamper-proof way. It also supports the execution of code through blockchain's smart contracts, adding automation of actions to the network with high trustability. However, as smart contracts are visible by anybody on the network, the business data and logic may be at risk, thus companies could be reluctant to use such technology. This paper aims to propose a pattern that allows the execution of automatable legal contract clauses, where its execution states are stored in an on-chain smart-contract and the logic needed to enforce it wraps it off-chain. An engine completes this pattern by running a business process that corresponds to the legal contract. We then propose a pattern-based solution based on a real-life use case: transportation of refrigerated goods. We argue that this pattern guarantees companies pseudonymity and data confidentiality while ensuring that an audit trail can be reconstituted through the blockchain smart-contract to identify misbehavior or errors. This paper paves the way for a future possible implementation of the solution described, as well as its evaluation.