Operations Smart Contract to Realize Decentralized System Operations Workflow for Consortium Blockchain

Enterprises have paid attention to consortium blockchains like Hyperledger Fabric, which is one of the most promising platforms, for efficient decentralized transactions without depending on any particu-lar organization. A consortium blockchain-based system will be typically built across multiple organizations. In such blockchain-based systems, sys-tem operations across multiple organizations in a decentralized manner are essential to maintain the value of introducing consortium blockchains. De-centralized system operations have recently been becoming realistic with the evolution of consortium blockchains. For instance, the release of Hyper -ledger Fabric v2.x, in which individual operational tasks for a blockchain network, such as command execution of configuration change of channels (Fabric's sub-networks) and upgrade of chaincodes (Fabric's smart con-tracts), can be partially executed in a decentralized manner. However, the operations workflows also include the preceding procedure of pre-sharing, coordinating, and pre-agreeing the operational information (e.g., configu-ration parameters) among organizations, after which operation executions can be conducted, and this preceding procedure relies on costly manual tasks. To realize efficient decentralized operations workflows for consor-tium blockchain-based systems in general, we propose a decentralized inter -organizational operations method that we call Operations Smart Contract (OpsSC), which defines an operations workflow as a smart contract. Further-more, we design and implement OpsSC for blockchain network operations with Hyperledger Fabric v2.x. This paper presents OpsSC for operating channels and chaincodes, which are essential for managing the blockchain networks, through clarifying detailed workflows of those operations. A cost evaluation based on an estimation model shows that the total operational cost for executing a typical operational scenario to add an organization to a blockchain network having ten organizations could be reduced by 54 percent compared with a conventional script-based method. The implementation of OpsSC has been open-sourced and registered as one of Hyperledger Labs projects, which hosts experimental projects approved by Hyperledger.