Ontology Modeling for Data Reliability Assessment in Consortium Blockchains

Blockchain is a promising technology to drive business processes transparency and traceability, providing consensus and agreement between business partners to reduce information asymmetry and uncertainty along business processes. However, it does not assure data quality in blockchain-driven business processes, and poor data reliability can still occur. In this paper, the authors provide a framework of ontology modeling and verification for data reliability assessment in blockchain-driven business processes. The authors offer formal, process-oriented ontology definitions to specify data reliability assessment requirements, based on which smart contracts can be executed to implement the requirements. They provide a preliminary case study to demonstrate the use of the approach to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of data reliability assessment in consortium blockchains. The proposed ontology model can serve as a tool to standardize data formats and control data quality in blockchain-driven business scenarios.