Bridging the gap: Predictive contracts in blockchain - achieving recalibration for industrial networks

Unfortunately, within the framework of blockchain contracting, a significant gap exists in comprehending contractual behavior, and the feasibility of predictive contracts has largely remained unexplored. A principal obstacle stems from the absence of a seamless integration between predictive concepts and blockchain technology. This deficiency is attributed to a failure to consider the inherent characteristics of blockchain when developing solutions aimed at improving predictive capabilities within blockchain-based systems. Many existing predictive approaches function externally to the fundamental blockchain framework, rendering them impractical. This has caused the idea of predictive contracts to be seen as unfeasible due to the character of blockchain smart contracts making it hard to do so. This includes its immutability and the inability for changes to be made once deployed. In this research, we introduce the concept of blockchain-based predictive contracting which stems from the theoretical idea of predictive contracting, and substantiate the feasibility of our approach, enabling blockchain smart contracts to adapt to changes in external environments upon which they depend. We attempt to achieve and prove the first phase of this idea, which we term “recalibration”. Here we provide a means for deployed smart contracts to become structurally changeable while responding to external situations without compromising their security. This we believe is the first phase needed for blockchain smart contracts before they can become predictable. Our approach capitalizes on the key-pair structure scheme utilized in existing blockchain systems to create a data signature, facilitating the identification of new smart contracts. We establish rules encompassing a configuration mechanism, empowering smart contracts to recognize newly-introduced agreements. Additionally, we implement an encoding system to enable the blockchain to respond to dynamic data. This we believe will provide a means for blockchain to be used well in industrial applications such as supply aircraft delivery networks and supply chain networks. To anticipate future scenarios, we devise a multi-versioning system that allows smart contracts to evolve over time. Our innovative concept is also demonstrated within a blockchain-based smart contract prediction scheme, ensuring the adaptability of blockchain-based smart contracts. This scheme comprises a smart contract tracing mechanism, an effective smart contract transitioning procedure, and a protocol for generating new smart contracting terms and conditions while preserving inherent trust within the system. Through extensive experimentation, involving opcode and smart contract ID extraction, Solidity Word2Vec model development, a blockchain-based embedding process, and smart contract versioning detection, we introduce the concept of blockchain-based predictive smart contracts. Notably, we observe a significant enhancement as multiple parties engage in complex operations on the blockchain, with an average gas cost of 31374215 Wei for demonstrating smart contractual operations within exogenous conditions. This validates the cost efficiency of our approach over prior methods. Our empirical results affirm the novelty and efficacy of our proposed concept.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jii.2024.100713