CSR:SmartChainDB - Enabling Smart Marketplaces With A Scalable Semantically-Enhanced Blockchain Platform

商品和服务的生产正变得越来越分散和分散，各组织往往需要与其他组织建立伙伴关系才能实现其目标。然而，在一些领域，如数字制造，风险可能非常高(例如飞机制造)。因此，迅速和有机地建立伙伴关系往往是不可能的，因为在伙伴之间建立信任的过程既费时又费钱--即所谓的“信托税”。在这种环境下，克服信托-税收障碍是较新或较小组织参与市场的一个重大障碍。SmartChainDB项目将调查中间件的基础和实现，以实现“智能数字市场”的愿景，在这种市场中，服务组织之间的合作伙伴关系是通过数字方式撮合的，而不是通过物理交互。它与NSF为21世纪科学和工程大创意愿景利用数据的计划保持一致，并可以帮助提高美国在先进制造业的竞争力。其愿景是建立在当前信任技术(区块链)的一般特性基础上，并开发必要的扩展，以实现(I)服务提供商能力和服务请求者需求的声明性描述；(Ii)基于关于组织、其资产、能力和业绩记录的数据和元数据的数据驱动的信任模型；(Iii)服务提供商出价与服务请求的自动匹配和基于信任的验证；以及(Iv)合作伙伴交易和合作的敏感部分的机密性和隐私。关键的设计挑战将是在实现可伸缩性、性能和质量的同时支持这些目标。SmartChainDB项目将加深我们在数字信任软件系统领域的洞察力。它将为下一代计算机科学家和工业系统工程师提供跨学科的培训机会。它还有可能通过显著降低信托税负担来扩大各个行业的市场参与，确保为规模较小的初创组织提供更公平的竞争环境。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Production of goods and services is becoming increasingly distributed and decentralized, with organizations often requiring partnerships with other organizations to achieve their goals. However, in some domains such as digital manufacturing, stakes can be very high (e.g. aircraft manufacturing). Consequently, rapid and organic formation of partnerships is often not possible because the process of establishing trust between partners is laborious, time-consuming and expensive - the so-called "trust tax". In this environment, overcoming the trust-tax barrier is a significant impediment to market participation for newer or smaller organizations. The SmartChainDB project will investigate the foundations and implementation of middleware for achieving the vision of "smart digital marketplaces" where partnerships between service organizations are brokered digitally rather than with physical interactions. It aligns with the NSF Harnessing Data for 21st Century Science and Engineering Big Ideas vision and can serve to improve US competitiveness in advanced manufacturing. The vision is to build on the general properties of the present-day technology of trust (blockchains) and develop necessary extensions for enabling (i) declarative descriptions of both service provider capabilities and service requestor needs; (ii) a data-driven trust model based on data and metadata about organizations, their assets, capabilities and performance records; (iii) automatic matching and trust-based validation of service providers' bids to requests for service; and (iv) confidentiality and privacy of sensitive parts of partner transactions and collaborations. Key design challenges will be supporting these goals while achieving scalability, performance, and quality. The SmartChainDB project will deepen our insights in the area of software systems for digital trust. It will provide inter-disciplinary training opportunities for the next-generation of computer scientists and industrial systems engineers. It also has the potential to broaden market participation in various industries by significantly reducing the trust-tax burden, ensuring a more level playing field for smaller and startup organizations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.