Automating Online to Offline Services using Smart Contracts

Topic Description

Modern services may need to be composed from online and offline services, examples are Uber and Air BnB. Such compositions are challenging, because they require effective selection of appropriate services so that, in turn, support better collaboration of both online and offline services. In addition, the lack of trust, transparency, and automation for services, especially those offline services not regulated by service level agreements, makes it hard to realise the business incentives for stakeholders. In this research project, we aim to see whether distributed ledger technology such as blockchains and smart contracts can solve this problem creatively.