Towards machine-readable semantic-based E-business contract representations using Network of Timed Automata (NTA)

Abstract

The smart contract is generally stored and executed by a computer program in the blockchain platform. However, the representation of program code is unfriendly for non-software developers since the process of a smart contract involves multiple parties such as lawyers, which is not easy to understand for most humans. To consider a broad acceptance of contracts, we design a novel contract representation to narrow the gap between smart contracts and e-business contracts. This paper proposes a novel semantic-based e-business contract model - Simple Natural Contract (SimNC) to represent a universal contract created by a Supervised Sentence Contract (SSC), which is inputted via a Semantic Input Method (SIM) with strict grammar from a human-understandable natural language contract. Then, the SSC is analyzed through Machine Natural Language (MNL) to enhance contract semantic understanding by enabling case grammar for crossing language parties. In doing so, SimNC analyses various deontic components, and combines them with the operational aspects of a legal contract, to achieve a common and better understanding between hard-code and natural language. In addition, we apply the SimNC into a Network of Timed Automata (NTA) for supporting automation, which builds a formal model including temporal constraints and then translates into an executable SimNC-NTA model. This paper aims to provide a bridge between natural language contracts and e-business contracts, making them universal and intelligible.