An overview on smart contracts : challenges, advances and platforms
- Authors: Zheng, Zibin , Xie, Shaoan , Dai, Hong-Ning , Chen, Weili , Imran, Muhammad
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Future Generation Computer Systems Vol. 105, no. (2020), p. 475-491
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Smart contract technology is reshaping conventional industry and business processes. Being embedded in blockchains, smart contracts enable the contractual terms of an agreement to be enforced automatically without the intervention of a trusted third party. As a result, smart contracts can cut down administration and save services costs, improve the efficiency of business processes and reduce the risks. Although smart contracts are promising to drive the new wave of innovation in business processes, there are a number of challenges to be tackled. This paper presents a survey on smart contracts. We first introduce blockchains and smart contracts. We then present the challenges in smart contracts as well as recent technical advances. We also compare typical smart contract platforms and give a categorization of smart contract applications along with some representative examples. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.
Blockchain for cloud exchange : a survey
- Authors: Xie, Shaoan , Zheng, Zibin , Chen, Weili , Wu, Jiajing , Dai, Hong-Ning , Imran, Muhammad
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Computers and Electrical Engineering Vol. 81, no. (2020), p.
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Compared with single cloud service providers, cloud exchange provides users with lower price and flexible options. However, conventional cloud exchange markets are suffering from a number of challenges such as central architecture being vulnerable to malicious attacks and cheating behaviours of third-party auctioneers. The recent advances in blockchain technologies bring the opportunities to overcome the limitations of cloud exchange. However, the integration of blockchain with cloud exchange is still in infancy and extensive research efforts are needed to tackle a number of research challenges. To bridge this gap, this paper presents an overview on using blockchain for cloud exchange. In particular, we first give an overview on cloud exchange. We then briefly survey blockchain technology and discuss the issues on using blockchain for cloud exchange in aspects of security, privacy, reputation systems and transaction management. Finally, we present the open research issues in this promising area. © 2019