Blockchain and Services – Exploring the Links: Keynote Paper

Blockchain is a novel distributed ledger technology which has attracted a wide range of interests for building the next generation of applications. The broad range of blockchain applications is made possible by so-called smart contracts, which transform a blockchain system into a general compute platform. As a new paradigm and technology platform in the integration space, this bears the question to which degree there is a connection to services, and in how far lessons learned on services can be applied to Blockchain. In the talk, I explored four different facets of this topic, as follows. First, application-level service interfaces for interaction with blockchain-based applications enable easy integration with existing infrastructure. Second, service composition can be achieved through smart contracts, and enable different approaches to orchestrations and choreographies. Third, Blockchain-aaS offerings cover infrastructure operation, but the idea presents further possibilities. And finally, some principles for designing SOA services and microservices can be applied to smart contract design.