EDALoCo: Enhancing the accessibility of blockchains through a low-code approach to the development of event-driven applications for smart contract management

  1. Rosa-Bilbao, Jesús 1
  2. Boubeta-Puig, Juan 1
  3. Rutle, Adrian 2
  1. 1 UCASE Software Engineering Research Group, University of Cadiz, Avda. de la Universidad de Cádiz 10, 11519 Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain.
  2. 2 Department of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway
Aldizkaria:
Computer Standards & Interfaces

Argitalpen urtea: 2023

Alea: 84

Orrialdeak: 1-2

Mota: Artikulua

DOI: 10.1016/J.CSI.2022.103676 GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openSarbide irekia editor

Garapen Iraunkorreko Helburuak

Laburpena

Blockchain is a cutting-edge technology based on a distributed, secure and immutable ledger that facilitates the registration of transactions and the traceability of tangible and intangible assets without requiring central governance. The agreements between the nodes participating in a blockchain network are defined through smart contracts. However, the compilation, deployment, interaction and monitoring of these smartcontracts is a barrier compromising the accessibility of blockchains by non-expert developers. To address this challenge, in this paper, we propose a low-code approach, called EDALoCo, that facilitates the development of event-driven applications for smart contract management. Theseapplications make blockchain more accessible for software developers who are non-experts in this technology as these can be modeled throughgraphical flows, which specify the communications between data producers, data processors and data consumers. Specifically, we have enhancedthe open-source Node-RED low-code platform with blockchain technology, giving support for the creation of user-friendly and lightweight eventdriven applications that can compile and deploy smart contracts in a particular blockchain. Additionally, this platform extension allows usersto interact with and monitor the smart contracts already deployed in a blockchain network, hiding the implementation details from non-expertsin blockchain. This approach was successfully applied to a case study of COVID-19 vaccines to monitor and obtain the temperatures to whichthese vaccines are continuously exposed, to process them and then to store them in a blockchain network with the aim of making them immutable and traceable to any user. As a conclusion, our approach enables the integration of blockchain with the low-code paradigm, simplifying thedevelopment of lightweight event-driven applications for smart contract management. The approach comprises a novel open-source solution thatmakes data security, immutability and traceability more accessible to software developers who are non-blockchain experts.