A Stream Pipeline Framework for Digital Payment Programming based on Smart Contracts

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel stream pipeline framework for programmable digital payments using smart contracts, transforming currencies into token streams and pipelining smart contracts for efficient, secure, and adaptable payment processing.

Contribution

The paper presents a new method for payment programming on DLTs by converting digital currencies into token streams and using configurable smart contract templates, reducing costs and improving security.

Findings

Reduces programming costs for digital payments.

Enhances security and adaptability of payment systems.

Supports most payment logics through configurable templates.

Abstract

Digital payments play a pivotal role in the burgeoning digital economy. Moving forward, the enhancement of digital payment systems necessitates programmability, going beyond just efficiency and convenience, to meet the evolving needs and complexities. Smart contract platforms like Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) networks and blockchains support programmable digital payments. However, the prevailing paradigm of programming payment logics involves coding smart contracts with programming languages, leading to high costs and significant security challenges. A novel and versatile method for payment programming on DLTs was presented in this paper - transforming digital currencies into token streams, then pipelining smart contracts to authorize, aggregate, lock, direct, and dispatch these streams efficiently from source to target accounts. By utilizing a small set of configurable templates, a few specialized smart contracts could be generated, and support most of payment logics through configuring and composing them. This approach could substantially reduce the cost of payment programming and enhance security, self-enforcement, adaptability, and controllability, thus hold the potential to become an essential component in the infrastructure of digital economy.