Blockchain-Based Enterprise Ballots in an Oil and Gas Consortium

Abstract

Enterprise ballot is a term often used to represent a deliberation process within a company or a consortium of companies. Such ballots are usually applied to support the decision-making process in scenarios where stakeholders and the organization have to decide on a certain subject before performing an action. However, there are few reported cases in the literature regarding enterprise ballots and their requirements. Hence, the enterprise needs are not mapped in depth, particularly in a consortium scenario. This presents challenges regarding process transparency, system reliability and user access restrictions. Therefore, an enterprise ballot system should have its own requirements to deal with this environment, ensuring a correct, verifiable and private ballot process. In this sense, this paper presents BallotBR, an enterprise ballot system built under the Libr@Blockchain project, which is supported by Libra consortium based on the ANP’s Research, Development and Innovation clauses. The requirements were collected with the companies stakeholders, and the system was implemented in a permissioned blockchain, Hyperledger Fabric. Furthermore, a permissioned blockchain network was proposed to provide correctness, verifiability and privacy to the ballot process. Such a network aims to promote a trustworthy, cooperative, and reliable environment. Still, the network intends not only to enable an enterprise ballot system for a specific consortium, but to allow that, in the future, other applications be attached, connecting other companies in this ecosystem. Since we used a permissioned blockchain, companies can exchange information privately through exclusive communication channels. Moreover, we developed an integration with a digital identity and signature solution to control access to the system, and ensure the identity of users’ actions within BallotBR. Last but not least, we present the identified threats to validity to expose and discuss the main concerns of our system design choices.