The Concept of Dynamic Smart Contracts to Enable Automated Payments in the PI
Author(s)
Spanuth, Malte
Franklin, Rod
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Abstract
One area of research that has not been extensively studied in the Physical Internet (PI) domain concerns how stakeholders receive payments for the services they have provided. While a payment mechanism is required for any transaction that occurs in the movement of a shipment from origin to destination (e.g., loading, unloading, load assembly, storage, etc.) we focus in this research on one type of transaction - the auctioning of a load to a carrier and the carrier’s movement of that load from one node to another node. Due to its decentralized architecture, blockchain (BC) represents a promising technology for handling this process. Thereby, smart contracts (SC) are stored on the BC. Once a previously defined event occurs, the SCs are automatically executed and release the payment. The SCs must be generated as soon as the winner of an auction has been determined and it is thus clear which carrier will transport the packet from the current to the next node. Due to the large number of different components of the auctions (including, e.g., certain country-specific regulations or handling requirements), standardized SCs cannot be created. They must be adapted each time to the parts specified in the auction. Performing this process manually would be inefficient and not feasible in the long run.
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Date
2023-06
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Poster