Abstract
Blockchain technology has been gaining popularity as a platform for developing decentralized applications and executing cross-organisational processes. However, extracting data that allows analysing the process view from blockchains is surprisingly hard. Therefore, blockchain data are rarely used for process mining. In this paper, we propose a framework for alleviating that pain. The framework comprises three main parts: a manifest specifying how data is logged, an extractor for retrieving data (structured according to the XES standard), and a generator that produces logging code to support smart contract developers. Among others, we propose a convenient way to encode logging data in a compact form, to achieve relatively low cost and high throughput for on-chain logging. The proposal is evaluated with logs created from generated logging code, as well as with existing blockchain applications that do not make use of the proposed code generator.
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Notes
- 1.
Summary adapted from [12].
- 2.
- 3.
https://www.cryptokitties.co/, accessed 30/5/2019.
- 4.
https://etherscan.io/address/0x06012c8cf97bead5deae237070f9587f8e7a266d#code, Accessed: 17/05/2019.
- 5.
Generated XES files and manifest available under https://doi.org/10.25919/5d242b0be3384.
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Klinkmüller, C., Ponomarev, A., Tran, A.B., Weber, I., van der Aalst, W. (2019). Mining Blockchain Processes: Extracting Process Mining Data from Blockchain Applications. In: Di Ciccio, C., et al. Business Process Management: Blockchain and Central and Eastern Europe Forum. BPM 2019. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 361. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30429-4_6
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