Description 

Current project targets privacy preservation developing modular tools for data sharing while envisioning the deployment of the necessary future blockchain and smart contract processes in the domain of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) evaluation.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) define the way that service and infrastructure providers are making available products to their clientele, for example, the dedicated agreements for Public Cloud Infrastructure As A Service. An SLA is an accurately defined contract involving the specified service level objectives (SLOs) and contractual guarantees that are promised to be delivered to clients by the providers of the service or infrastructure. Particularly, monitoring of SLAs determines whether a provider meets an SLA's contractual terms or otherwise breaches of the agreement unfold. SLA breaches lead to definite violations of the terms, namely SLA Violations, as described in the contract. Ultimately, contractual definitions and parameter values computations vary across different provider setups, e.g. Telecom, 5G, Edge, and Cloud.

The main objective of the project is to develop privacy preservation through trusted execution environments, zero-knowledge proofs, or ring signatures for the corresponding transactional operations of SLAs assessment under a modular data sharing scheme on Hyperledger Fabric. The applicable deployment and engagement with such architectural elements of privacy leads the current project to preserve and secure data privacy with configured transparency that regards SLA related data being populated among agreement participants. Therefore, the result framework respects data privacy and enables operation building on top of the distributed SLA monitoring and computation intelligence in order to nurture holistically data protection along the SLA ecosystem procedures.

Additional Information

Current technical and research directions adhere to the applicability and establishment of privacy in SLA evaluation processes through the appropriate deployment of corresponding privacy-preserving tools for data sharing on modular architectures. Current work and references are found as follows.

• Hyperledger Telecom SIG; LF Networking. Self-Assessing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with Hyperledger Fabric. 2023. Available online: https://www.hyperledger.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/HL_SolutionsBrief_SLAs_120922.pdf. 
  • Solution Brief White Paper presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1jHVh8N3wk

• Hyperledger Telecom SIG. Establishing Service Level Agreements Self-Assessment on Blockchain. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcvUocJnY3Q

• Kapsoulis, N.; Psychas, A.; Litke, A.; Varvarigou, T. Reinforcing SLA Consensus on Blockchain. Computers 2021, 10, 159. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers10120159.

• ISO/IEC 19086-2:2018 Cloud Computing—Service Level Agreement (SLA) Framework—Part 2: Metric Model: "SLALOM SLA Specification and Reference Model". Available online: https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5aa6eccf3&appId=PPGMS.

Learning Objectives

Selected Mentee will benefit from the following learning objectives during the course of the Mentorship.

1. Learn how to contribute to open source software and engage with the community of Hyperledger
2. Learn how to couple obtained academic knowledge with real-world scenarios and industrial use cases
3. Develop and maintain Hyperledger compatible modules required for the specific project needs, while acquiring wider understanding of software engineering
4. Deploy sophisticated business intelligent chaincodes that exploit Fabric modularity allowing interconnection of different blockchain concepts
5. Dive deeper into blockchain privacy research:
   1. Preservation of data exposure
   2. Configurable data sharing
   3. Transparency trade-off
6. Hands-on experience with research and development workflows and best practices
7. Valuable insights on software project documentation for appropriate dissemination and community building

Expected Outcome

Expected produced outcomes of the project include the following:

1. Build Hyperledger Fabric chaincodes for dedicated SLA evaluation operations and deployments
2. Deploy and automate private transactions or states
3. Consult and adhere to cryptographic principles on private data sharing
4. Integrate required software components interactions and exchange between on chain and off chain data
5. Facilitate private interactions for data sharing between parties
6. Maintain software modules defining and operating on the SLA assessment procedures inside a permissioned network
7. Produce appropriate guiding documentation on how to use, develop and build on the result framework

Relation to Hyperledger 

Included:

• Hyperledger Fabric: https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric
• Samples for Hyperledger Fabric: https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-samples
• Hyperledger Fabric Private Chaincode: https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-private-chaincode

Mentee Skills

Master's or Ph.D. levels preferred. Research-experienced undergraduates could be eligible.

Required:

• Excellent communicator and team spirit
• Willingness to learn and contribute on novel blockchain approaches
• Very good understanding of Hyperledger Fabric Key Concepts
• Understanding of SLA frameworks
• Experience with deploying chaincodes on Fabric networks

Preferred:

• Experience with research and development
• Golang, typescript, react

Future plans

The overall plan of the project constitutes the contribution to privacy-enhancing tools supporting industry SLA evaluation operations for the Hyperledger ecosystem. Mentorship results will be further exploited by the Hyperledger Telecom SIG community in research and development efforts towards standardization of SLA evaluation and assessment deployments in dissimilar telecommunication or other setups. 

Mentor(s) Names and Contact Info

Nikos Kapsoulis
E-mail:  nkapsoulis@innov-acts.com 
Discord:  Nikos#8629