ExplanaSC: A Framework for Determining Information Requirements for Explainable Blockchain Smart Contracts

Abstract

Blockchain smart contracts (SCs) have emerged as a transformative technology, enabling the automation and execution of contractual agreements without the need for intermediaries. However, as SCs evolve to become more complex in their decentralised decision-making abilities, there are notable difficulties in comprehending the underlying reasoning process and ensuring users’ understanding. The existing literature primarily focuses on the technical aspects of SC, overlooking the exploration of the decision-making process within these systems and the involvement of humans. In this paper, we propose a framework that integrates human-centered design principles by applying Situation Awareness (SA) and goal directed task analysis (GDTA) concepts to determine information requirements necessary to design eXplainable smart contracts (XSC). The framework provides a structured approach for requirements engineers to identify information that can keep users well-informed throughout the decision-making process. The framework considers factors such as the business logic model, data model, and roles and responsibilities model to define specific information requirements that shape SC behaviour and necessitate explanations. To guide the determination of information requirements, the framework categorises SC decision mechanisms into autonomy, governance, processing, and behaviour. The ExplanaSC framework promotes the generation of XSC explanations through three levels aligned with SA: XSC explanation for perception, XSC explanation for comprehension, and XSC explanation for projection. Overall, this framework contributes to the development of XSC systems and lays the foundation for more transparent, and trustworthy decentralised applications. The XSC explanations aims to facilitate user awareness of complex decision-making processes. The evaluation of the framework uses a case to exemplify the working of our framework, its added value and limitations, and consults experts in the field for feedback and refinements.