SBIR Phase I: A Microservices Approach To Low-Latency Process Interaction Through Distributed Ledgers

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to make unique properties of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) widely available to developers. In doing so, the company will empower developers to create novel distributed services with trustworthy and consistent shared state operations that will lead to more transparent business and governance practices. In the Phase I tools will lead to new innovative meat distribution businesses in Bozeman, MT. In the long term, we aim to build the fundamental tools for the growing ranks of blockchain developers, who need powerful and easy-to-integrate tools that access and manipulate DLT state. Ultimately, our suite of services will provide a unified interface to multiple DLT implementations and facilitate the trustworthy exchange of shared state among different applications to create a wide and consistent view of world state. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to create an ecosystem of tools to operate on shared application state stored on DLTs and to roll out these tools as they mature. The ultimate goal is to provide a unified API much like that of leading cloud service providers, which consists of several incrementally introduced services. Specifically, the services planned to provide are: 1. Blocky Valve - A JavaScript API that simplifies DLT read and write access. 2. Blocky Pipes - A DLT data delivery microservice based on message queues connected to Blocky Valve. 3. Blocky Loading Ramp - A continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) service of smart contracts. 4. Blocky Cement - An oracle service for exchanging data across DLTs using consensus-based provenance. Cement will also enable interaction between smart contracts across different DLTs. 5. Blocky Crates - A database-like query interface to data stored on DLTs. Crates will also enable smart contracts to interact with up-to-date shared application state stored on DLTs. 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.