A Survey on SLA Management Using Blockchain Based Smart Contracts

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is an agreement between clients and providers in the context of a particular service provision. In fact, trust between the consumer and the service provider (SP) is a real issue, especially when there is a violation of the SLA. Usually, the consumer is unable to prove or determine a violation. Therefore, traditional ways to ensure trustworthiness are no longer effective. Recent studies have shown that Blockchain technology and smart contracts (SCs) are an effective solution to address this issue. Indeed, blockchain technology is one of the most promising innovations that is contributing to the development of many complex and decentralized service-based systems. Blockchain technology also plays an essential role in SLA management. In this case, the SLA between the customer and the provider is transformed into a SC that guides service provisioning and guarantees a better quality of service (QoS). This paper investigates various research studies over the period (2018-2020) interested in SLA management using blockchain and SCs to detect violation and to enforce compensation. We provide a detailed description of each proposed solution, and we draw conclusions from a comparative study between all of them.