A modelling approach for building blockchain applications that enables trustable inter-organizational collaborations

Abstract

Inter-organizational collaborations (IOCs) represent a significant aspect of any organization because organizations depend on each other to perform functions that are not part of their core competencies. There are trust issues due to lack of security, interoperability, and transparency in systems and processes that support inter-organizational collaborations. First, due to security issues, information exchange between collaborating parties can be modified and manipulated by the party responsible for managing the system that supports the collaboration. Second, due to the lack of interoperability, the real-time availability of data between collaborating parties cannot be guaranteed. Finally, lack of transparency implies that illegitimate manipulations performed by the centralized party that manages the collaboration cannot be easily detected.

Blockchain technology has shown potential in addressing the trust issues associated with inter -organizational collaborations. Blockchain is a peer-to-peer network that provides the capabilities for decentralized storage of data by replicating information across the nodes of the peers participating in a given network. This ensures immutability and real-time access to information stored on the blockchain. With decentralized consensus, blockchain provides a transparent governance system for adding new records or information to the network. With smart contracts, inter-organizational business processes and governance systems can be coded into computer-executable programs to ensure automated accountability of the parties involved in organizational collaborations. Computer programs that adopt and implement the properties of blockchain technology such as decentralized storage, consensus, and smart contracts are referred to as decentralized applications (DApps).

Nevertheless, despite the opportunities provided by blockchain DApps in addressing security, interoperability, and transparency issues in organizational collaborations, there exists a lack of a well-defined and structured software-engineering approach for designing and developing blockchain applications. This thesis proposes the development of a modelling approach for building blockchain DApps that specifically addresses problems in inter-organizational collaborations by applying agent-based modelling and UML concepts. The modelling approach developed in this thesis, referred to as Trustable DApp Modelling (T-DM), provides the possibility for outlining functions that enable the execution of complex interactions in organizational collaborations in a trustable manner. The development of the T-DM approach and corresponding support tool follows the design-science research method involving the rigorous creation and evaluation of artefacts. Evaluations are performed to understand the semantic correctness of the T-DM approach and the effectiveness of the support tool in creating blockchain applications design models.