Christopher Frantz

From Institutions to Code: Towards Automated Generation of Smart Contracts

Blockchain technology has emerged as a solution to consistency problems in peer to peer networks. By now, it has matured as a solution to a range of use cases in which it can effectively provide the notion of third party trust without the need for a trusted (physical) third party, which makes it an attractive coordination mechanism for distributed systems. To promote the wide adoption of this technology, we yet lack mechanisms that make the specification and interpretation of smart contracts accessible to a broader audience. In this work, we propose a modeling approach that supports the semi-automated translation of human-readable contract representations into computational equivalents in order to enable the codification of laws into verifiable and enforceable computational structures that reside within a public blockchain. We identify smart contract components that correspond to real world institutions, and propose a mapping that we operationalize using a domain-specific language in order to support the contract modeling process. We explore this capability based on selected examples and plot out directions for future research on smart contracts.

nADICO: A Nested Grammar of Institutions

We propose a refined institutional scheme derived from Crawford and Ostrom’s Grammar of Institutions (GoI) that has been refined to provide a more comprehensive representation of conventions, norms, and rules, which extends to describing institutions in more detail but also allowing the expression of fuzzy aspects (e.g. the uncertainty about a sanction’s occurrence). After initially reviewing the GoI grammar structure (also referred to as ADICO), we discuss its adoption as well as limitations. We introduce selected extensions and refinements that enable the grammar’s ability to describe institutions in more detail, but also to capture more complex institutions as well as characteristics of institutions themselves, such as institutional regress.

Micro-agents on android: interfacing agents with mobile applications

The comparatively recent move towards smartphones, and along with this new operating systems, such as Android, opens up new opportunities and offers potential to build new mobile agent-based applications. Android gives applications access to a wide-ranging set of sensors and different communication channels --- realizing the notion of nomadic computing --- and supports a concurrent application layout based on loosely coupled components. This combination makes it particularly suitable for agent-based applications. Yet, it has several limitations: Android is not a multi-agent system on its own behalf and does not consistently employ loose coupling to give access to its capabilities. To address those concerns we have ported our lightweight

Augmenting android with AOSE principles for enhanced functionality reuse in mobile applications

#956;-agent framework

Modelling the Impact of Role Specialisation on Cooperative Behaviour in Historic Trader Scenarios

#956;2 to the Android platform and directly interfaced it with Android platform facilities. This offers mutual benefits: agent-based applications can access Android functionality in a loosely coupled and unified fashion, while at the same time allowing the developer to consistently think in an agent-oriented manner. Android can use the

Analysing the Apprenticeship System in the Maghribi Traders Coalition

#956;-agent platform as a lightweight middleware module to build distributed applications in a hybrid fashion. We present our system architecture, called Micro-agents on Android or MOA, and describe an example application using this approach as well as a performance benchmark. We further outline potential application areas and contrast it to existing approaches to build multi-agent applications on Android.

Building an Artificial Primitive Human Society: An Agent-Based Approach

The Android platform has popularized and caused a widespread adoption of its application development approach based on loosely coupled application components. This loose coupling allows for a flexible composition of applications but also enables invocations and reuse of individual components from third-party applications. One problem with the original Android design is that the rather coarse-grained application components themselves prohibit more fine-grained decomposition. To provide more flexible loosely coupled components and also to foster the reuse of more elementary fine-grained functionality, we suggest the extension of Android application components with our concept of

Analysing the Dynamics of Norm Evolution Using Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Sets

#956;-agents. Moreover, the organisational aspects of the

Dynamic ad hoc coordination of distributed tasks using micro-agents

#956;-agent model introduce means to structure functionality in a more systematic manner. In this article, we introduce our platform concept called Micro-agents on Android (MOA) that realizes the integration of application development principles with a lightweight notion of agency. Several scenarios are used to describe the benefit from functionality reuse across applications enabled by MOA. A performance evaluation demonstrates that

Comic Strip Narratives in Time Geography

#956;-agents interact in a more efficient manner than Android services, making them well-suited for fine-grained decomposition. Our approach serves as an example showing how existing technology can benefit from utilizing the modelling advantages of agent-based technologies.