The Feasability of a Permissioned Blockchain-based SLA-management system : A novel approach to SLA management

Sammanfattning: Blockchain seems to be the hot new innovation that brings disruption to many different industries in the form of decentralization. Groups of peers can finally organize and work together without a central actor having an authority over the transactions that occur. Other than decentralization, due to the distributed and cryptographic nature of the data, the system also enjoys resilience, immutability and safety. In this thesis, we are leveraging permissioned blockchain technology to take steps towards a trustless service level agreement (SLA) management system where both service providers and customers lack the power to tamper with the contracts and their outcomes. The thesis yields a systematic literature review on the state-of-the-art within SLA management and relevant blockchain technology, a proof-of-concept working with Ericssons decentralized edge service marketplace, Nubo, and finally asimulation which evaluates how the proof-of-concept performs in terms of throughput and latency under different network loads. The simulation shows that the network works as expected, until 70 transactions per second (TPS) are reached, at which point the network is limited by throughput.