Designing and implementation of a Model Driven Smart Contracts platform for Collaborative Processes

Model-Driven ChoreChain 2.0 platform responds to the need of distributed systems by offering a tool capable of building blockchain applications to enforce the correct execution of collaborative business processes, starting from a BPMN process model. Blockchain is a technology that offers basic building blocks to support the execution of collaborative business processes involving mutually untrusted parties in a decentralized environment. Several studies demonstrated the feasibility of designing blockchain-based collaborative business processes by means of a high-level notation. For example, the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) can be used to automatically generate the code artefacts required to execute these processes on a blockchain platform. In this technical report, we describe the principles and rationale of the model-driven approach to collaborative process automation deployed on the blockchain. To achieve these principles, we have created a platform capable of translating a BPMN process model into a set of smart contracts that can enforce the business process by triggering blockchain transactions on these contracts. We allow code artefacts to be deployed on the blockchain by encoding all the execution logic captured in the process model through ad-hoc tools. Business processes are modelled in BPMN 2.0 through a modeller UI component presented as a web application, which offers mechanisms to inject business logic inside. The whole platform is deployed as multi-container Docker applications and includes Ganache as local blockchain, while providing a REST API back-end within a microservice-based architecture.