Trust-independent Blockchain for self-interested Multiagent Systems through Smart Contracts

Smart contracts allow trusted transactions to be built on a blockchain according to predefined rules. Besides, the blockchain preserves all the transactions in an immutable way. These characteristics can provide a platform for lower levels of trust in communications between agents in a multiagent system. Agents have a collection of goals to reach and act accordingly to gain more benefits from society. Communications may need a level of trust between agents to happen. In this paper, we present a blockchain mechanism based on smart contracts to extend the Contract Net protocol. This platform allows trust-independent cooperation to happen more often. Incentives in such cooperation move through smart contracts and increase the utility of agents. With experiments, the proposed protocol will be tested against a normal environment, and the results will be discussed and analyzed. This trust-independent environment results in an overall improvement in system cooperation.