Towards Agent-oriented Blockchains: Autonomous Smart Contracts

1. Towards Agent-Oriented Blockchains: Autonomous Smart Contracts Giovanni Ciatto1 Alfredo Maffi1 Stefano Mariani2 Andrea Omicini1 giovanni.ciatto@unibo.it alfredo.maffi@studio.unibo.it stefano.mariani@unimore.it andrea.omicini@unibo.it 1Dipartimento di Informatica – Scienza e Ingegneria—Università di Bologna 2Dipartimento di Scienze e Metodi dell’Ingegneria, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia 17th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Ávila, Spain – June 27, 2019 Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 1 / 19

2. Outline 1 Blockchain and Smart Contracts: Overview 2 Why Agency is a Better Choice for Smart Contracts 3 Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts 4 Tenderfone: Our Prototype Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 2 / 19

3. Blockchain and Smart Contracts: Overview Next in Line. . . 1 Blockchain and Smart Contracts: Overview 2 Why Agency is a Better Choice for Smart Contracts 3 Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts 4 Tenderfone: Our Prototype Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 3 / 19

4. Blockchain and Smart Contracts: Overview Smart Contracts and Blockchain at a Glance Shared, append-only, and distributed ledger of transactions tracking changes to the state of some asset Secured using cryptographic schemes & replication Transactions are approved and propagated through consensus Smart contracts (SC) if the tracked assets are reactive processes Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 4 / 19

5. Blockchain and Smart Contracts: Overview Layered View of Blockchain Systems Smart contracts Interpreter Consensus engine Network Users may deploy custom smart contracts SC are executed by a replicated interpreter Replicas kept consistent by consensus engine e.g. middleware + consensus protocol Research questions Which is the current programming paradigm for SC? Which is the best programming paradigm for SC? Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 5 / 19

6. Blockchain and Smart Contracts: Overview Layered View of Blockchain Systems Smart contracts Interpreter Consensus engine Network Users may deploy custom smart contracts SC are executed by a replicated interpreter Replicas kept consistent by consensus engine e.g. middleware + consensus protocol Research questions Which is the current programming paradigm for SC? Which is the best programming paradigm for SC? Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 5 / 19

7. Why Agency is a Better Choice for Smart Contracts Next in Line. . . 1 Blockchain and Smart Contracts: Overview 2 Why Agency is a Better Choice for Smart Contracts 3 Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts 4 Tenderfone: Our Prototype Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 6 / 19

8. Why Agency is a Better Choice for Smart Contracts Smart Contracts – Expectations vs. Reality What they promise autonomous entities augmenting real world contracts . . . . . . with self-enforcing clauses acting as trusted intermediaries What they actually are essentially objects, as in OOP × no control ﬂow encapsulation × sync. method call × purely reactive + blockchain limitations × only ﬁnite computations × only deterministic computations × no concurrency Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 7 / 19

9. Why Agency is a Better Choice for Smart Contracts Smart Contracts – Expectations vs. Reality What they promise autonomous entities augmenting real world contracts . . . . . . with self-enforcing clauses acting as trusted intermediaries What they actually are essentially objects, as in OOP × no control ﬂow encapsulation × sync. method call × purely reactive + blockchain limitations × only ﬁnite computations × only deterministic computations × no concurrency Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 7 / 19

10. Why Agency is a Better Choice for Smart Contracts Our Claim Takeaway SC would better match their intended goal if modelled as intelligent agents through computational autonomy, SC would be able to enforce more complex rules rule enforcement steps through perception, deliberation, and action inference capabilities may let SC autonomously ﬁgure out how to enforce rules Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 8 / 19

11. Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts Next in Line. . . 1 Blockchain and Smart Contracts: Overview 2 Why Agency is a Better Choice for Smart Contracts 3 Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts 4 Tenderfone: Our Prototype Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 9 / 19

12. Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts Stairway to Agency – How Should SC Achieve Autonomy? State-of-art control ﬂow  encapsulation asynchronous  communication reactiveness  to time Tenderfone reactiveness  to environment  and space logic  inference BDI  architecture “Strong” agency expressiveness abstraction gap Step 1: Computational and social autonomy how to realise control ﬂow encapsulation? how to realise asynchronous communication among SC? Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 10 / 19

13. Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts Stairway to Agency – How Should SC Achieve Autonomy? State-of-art control ﬂow  encapsulation asynchronous  communication reactiveness  to time Tenderfone reactiveness  to environment  and space logic  inference BDI  architecture “Strong” agency expressiveness abstraction gap Step 2: Temporal situatedness how to make SC time aware? how to make SC time reactive? Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 10 / 19

14. Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts Stairway to Agency – How Should SC Achieve Autonomy? State-of-art control ﬂow  encapsulation asynchronous  communication reactiveness  to time Tenderfone reactiveness  to environment  and space logic  inference BDI  architecture “Strong” agency expressiveness abstraction gap Step 3: Spatial, environmental situatedness how to model spatial situatedness? how to model the environment? Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 10 / 19

15. Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts Stairway to Agency – How Should SC Achieve Autonomy? State-of-art control ﬂow  encapsulation asynchronous  communication reactiveness  to time Tenderfone reactiveness  to environment  and space logic  inference BDI  architecture “Strong” agency expressiveness abstraction gap Step 4: Inference capabilities which sorts of inference may SC exploit? on which knowledge bases? Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 10 / 19

16. Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts Stairway to Agency – How Should SC Achieve Autonomy? State-of-art control ﬂow  encapsulation asynchronous  communication reactiveness  to time Tenderfone reactiveness  to environment  and space logic  inference BDI  architecture “Strong” agency expressiveness abstraction gap Step 5: Goal-orientation (e.g. BDI) how to model multiple intentions (i.e. multiple control ﬂows)? how to model perceptions, and actions? Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 10 / 19

17. Tenderfone: Our Prototype Next in Line. . . 1 Blockchain and Smart Contracts: Overview 2 Why Agency is a Better Choice for Smart Contracts 3 Roadmap to Agency for Smart Contracts 4 Tenderfone: Our Prototype Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 11 / 19

18. Tenderfone: Our Prototype Tenderfone Autonomous, logic SC Tenderfone Tendermint + tuProlog Network Our prototype for a SC interpreter realises step 1, 2, 4 of our roadmap provides an interpreter for computationally autonomous, logic-based smart contracts based on the Tendermint [Kwon, 2014] consensus engine and the tuProlog framework [Denti et al., 2001] Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 12 / 19

19. Tenderfone: Our Prototype Tenderfone Smart Contracts API I SC programs are Prolog theories, with facts, rules, and callbacks e.g. init/1 or receive/2 callbacks are executed when particular triggering events occur e.g. SC creation, users messages, SC messages in callbacks, SC can send messages (even to self) through primitives some primitives are for time-related control ﬂow management e.g. send/2, delay/2 or periodically/2 users can manulate / interact with SC through meta-primitives e.g. invoke/2 or deploy/2 both primitives and meta-primitives have an asynchronous semantics full-ﬂedged Prolog standard lib + Dynamic KB as SC storage Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 13 / 19

20. Tenderfone: Our Prototype Tenderfone Smart Contracts API II Callback Executor Triggering (meta-)primitives Initiator init(A) SC with KB = T deploy(T, A) user receive(M, S) SC R invoke(M, R) send(M, R) user S SC S receive(M, R) SC R when(T, M) delay(D, M) periodically(P, M) SC R SC R SC R + contextual predicates e.g. self/1 or now/1 Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 14 / 19

21. Tenderfone: Our Prototype SC Program Example § init([Delay | OtherArgs]) :- now(Time), Next is Time + Delay, when(Next, foo). receive(foo, Me) :- self(Me), periodically(10 min, bar). receive(bar, Me) :- /* does something once every 10 min */. receive(Message, Sender) :- not self(Sender), Answer = /* compute answer */, send(Answer, Sender). ¦ ¥ U A B deploy(Delay) init([Delay]) when(Now + Delay, foo) after Delay seconds receive(foo, A) periodically(10 min, bar) once every 10 minutes receive(bar, A) do something periodic in any moment Message receive(Message, B) compute Answer send(Answer, B) Answer Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 15 / 19

22. Tenderfone: Our Prototype Why is this Challenging? ! more details at [Ciatto et al., 2019] . . . Interpreter Consensus engine . . . Common TX workﬂow Client → Replicas → Consensus → SC ! each SC is replicated as well Tenderfone strongly rely on spontaneous TX generated by interpreters spontaneous TX are critical w.r.t. current BCT architectures in theory, we re-modeled how the interpreter and consensus engine layers should interact in practice, no edits to the Tendermint internalsCiatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 16 / 19

23. Conclusions and Future Work Conclusion Summarising, we discuss why SC would be better modelled as agents provide a research roadmap driving SC towards agency describe an API for logic-based, autonomous SC prove it possible through a prototype implementation: Tenderfone In the future, we plan to model environment, perception, and actions for SC realise SC as BDI-like agents endow SC with higher-level coordination/synchronisation mechanisms Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 17 / 19

24. Conclusions and Future Work Conclusion Summarising, we discuss why SC would be better modelled as agents provide a research roadmap driving SC towards agency describe an API for logic-based, autonomous SC prove it possible through a prototype implementation: Tenderfone In the future, we plan to model environment, perception, and actions for SC realise SC as BDI-like agents endow SC with higher-level coordination/synchronisation mechanisms Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 17 / 19

25. References References Ciatto, G., Maﬃ, A., Mariani, S., and Omicini, A. (2019). Smart contracts are more than objects: Pro-activeness on the blockchain. Denti, E., Omicini, A., and Ricci, A. (2001). tuProlog: A light-weight Prolog for Internet applications and infrastructures. In Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages, volume 1990 of LNCS, pages 184–198. Springer. Kwon, J. (2014). Tendermint: Consensus without mining. Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 18 / 19

26. Towards Agent-Oriented Blockchains: Autonomous Smart Contracts Giovanni Ciatto1 Alfredo Maffi1 Stefano Mariani2 Andrea Omicini1 giovanni.ciatto@unibo.it alfredo.maffi@studio.unibo.it stefano.mariani@unimore.it andrea.omicini@unibo.it 1Dipartimento di Informatica – Scienza e Ingegneria—Università di Bologna 2Dipartimento di Scienze e Metodi dell’Ingegneria, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia 17th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Ávila, Spain – June 27, 2019 Ciatto et al. (UniBo, UniMoRe) Autonomous Smart Contracts PAAMS 2019, Jun 27 19 / 19