Extracting Event Logs for Process Mining from Data Stored on the Blockchain

Extracting Event Logs for Process
Mining from Data Stored on the
Blockchain
Roman Mühlberger, Stefan Bachhofner, Claudio Di Ciccio,
Luciano García-Bañuelos, Orlenys López-Pintado
Second Int. Workshop on Security and Privacy-
enhanced Business Process Management
(SPBP’19), 2 September 2019, Vienna, Austria
VIENNA, SEPTEMBER 2019
https://easychair.org/publications/preprint/cW8l

https://easychair.org/publications/preprint/cW8
We can execute processes on the
blockchain
Weber, Xu, Riveret, Governatori, Ponomarev, Mendling: Untrusted business process monitoring and execution using blockchain. In: Proc. of BPM. Springer, 2016.
D.C, Cecconi, Dumas, Garcı́a-Bañuelos, et al. Blockchain support for collaborative business processes. Informatik Spektrum pp. 1–9 (May 2019)
© MÜHLBERGER, BACHHOFNER, DI CICCIO, GARCÍA-BAÑUELOS, LÓPEZ-PINTADOPAGE 2 02/09/2019

Can we do process analytics on the
blockchain?

From process knowledge to transactional data
Blockchain as a process
infrastructure

 Transfer of (crypto)assets (Ether, Bitcoin, Litecoin, EOS, …)
from account A to account B
Transaction
Externally Owned
Account (EOA)
Externally Owned
Account (EOA)
Digital signature

Ledger
 Ordered collection of transactions
 The order matters!

Block
 Blocks group and collate transactions

Blockchain
 Blocks refer back to direct predecessors

The blockchain remembers

Hashing
 Input/output (I/O)
 I: (bit)string (message)
 Any length
 O: fixed-length hash value (digest)
 No secret key
 All operations are public
© http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/days-gone-by-talk-of-ipswich-s-old-postal-service-provides-a-
first-class-delivery-of-memories-1-4691350

 SHA3("Hi there!") =
0xA61E6BF963B21B593248A1E0972D434
92E018E5E3B8300B0DF21D2D409EC8580
 SHA3("Hello there!") =
0xBCAA8219A31B43EE23EAEDE08AEBAE3
9CDBA2DD382D3579DE9463070E53DA6BD
 SHA3("BPM") =
0x5AAC68BEA69BB8F9197B69476C4A697
72183D1FA6BB622460072CF60E9047F71
 SHA3("BPMS") =
0x6573FBE16AD1CA39D560F9EA855BAD4
771D988D6E1635FAD7BF65CF8C7552BD1
Hashing and preimage resistance
 Input/output (I/O)
 I: (bit)string (message)
 Any length
 O: fixed-length hash value (digest)
 No secret key
 All operations are public

From peer-to-peer electronic cash system
to programmable distributed environment
“A universal platform with
internal programming language,
so that everyone could write
any app”
[V. Buterin]
https://www.ethereum.org/
02/09/2019
© MÜHLBERGER, BACHHOFNER, DI CICCIO, GARCÍA-
BAÑUELOS, LÓPEZ-PINTADO
PAGE 12

A programmable distributed environment
Gas price (execution costs)
Input (and output) encoded data. Yes, hashing strikes back.
Smart Contract
Account

 Smart Contracts in Ethereum
 live in the Ethereum environment
 have direct control over own balance
and key/value storage
 Called smart because
executed by a machine
Smart Contracts are pieces of code
© MÜHLBERGER, BACHHOFNER, DI CICCIO, GARCÍA-BAÑUELOS, LÓPEZ-PINTADOPAGE 14
Code courtesy of Ingo Weber
02/09/2019

Smart Contracts are pieces of code
Code courtesy of Ingo Weber
Business logic of a process
encoded as a smart contract💡
02/09/2019

 Every task corresponds to a function
 Application Binary Interface (ABI)
 Contract descriptor
Concept
Understanding the enacted task
Example
 Function signature:
function receive_order(uint256) public
 Corresponding ABI:
… { "constant":false,
"inputs":[{"name":"workitemId","type":"uint256"}],
"name":"receive_order",
"outputs":[],
"payable":false,
"stateMutability":"nonpayable",
"type":"function“ } …

Understanding the enacted task
Example
 Function signature:
function receive_order(uint256) public
 Corresponding ABI:
… { "constant":false,
"inputs":[{"name":"workitemId","type":"uint256"}],
"name":"receive_order",
"outputs":[],
"payable":false,
"stateMutability":"nonpayable",
"type":"function“ } …
SHA3(“receive_order")=0xb20a9aa9619b9dc0c6a76bef0
c51350699afd93b05757350f8c20de71bc75e18
D.C, Cecconi, Mendling, Felix, Haas, Lilek, Riel, Rumpl, Uhlig: Blockchain-Based Traceability of Inter-organisational Business Processes. In: Proc. of BMSD. Springer, 2018
Function selector
02/09/2019

From event logs to process knowledge
Process mining

Event logs 101
Trace identifier
(to distinguish process instances)

Event logs 101
Event identifier

Event logs 101
Activity name
(labelling actions)

Event logs 101
Timestamp
(time of execution)

Event logs 101
Resource
(executing actor)

IEEE Standard 1849-2016 for
eXtensible Event Stream (XES)
http://www.xes-standard.org/

IEEE Standard 1849-2016 for
eXtensible Event Stream (XES)
Event
Event
attributes
Trace
Event log

• Extended models
(frequency, time…)
• Diagnostics and audits
• Conformance measures
• Predictions
• Operational support
Play in
Event logs for process mining
Replay
Discovery Analytics
http://www.promtools.org/

From blockchain transactions to event logs
Image courtesy of Matej Puchovsky

The approach

Original process
Case study
Factory contract
Weber, Xu, Riveret, Governatori, Ponomarev, Mendling: Untrusted business process monitoring and execution using blockchain. In: Proc. of BPM, 329-347. Springer, 2016.

 BUT how to access and use the data stored on the blockchain for
analytics?
 First: Understand Blockchain Data Model
Blockchain data for process mining?

analytics?

analytics?
 Second: Understand Process Data Model

Architectural overview
Jup
yte
r
RPC
Ethereum Blockchain
Activi
ty
name
s
0xecb07b8c
Ask_developer()
transaction
Process instance Data
XES
Instance Data
Data ExportXES
Function
Signature
Hash
Hash = Hash?
Filter
transactions
Instance trans. Activity names
Transactions data
Data properties
Transaction instance data
Decode hashes
Sig. hash +
activity
name
Get
more
data
© MÜHLBERGER, BACHHOFNER, DI CICCIO, GARCÍA-BAÑUELOS, LÓPEZ-
PINTADO
PAGE 38 02/09/2019

Retrieve data from blockchain

Assign event log attributes accordingly

Blockchain data event log representation

Live demo
Ethereum
Blockchain
XES

 Prototypes adjusted to the blockchain-based process data model
 Prototypes may have to be adapted for different processes or execution engines
 Activity executions identified from function calls
 Process instances associated with smart contract life-cycles
 Event timestamps approximated with the block time
 Event logs stored off-chain
However…

 Input:
 Contracts ABI and addresses
 Process knowledge (activities, …)
 Required:
 Instance IDs, timestamps and activity names (in transaction payload)
 Main challenge
 Mapping process-specific data with blockchain data representations
 Future research
 Modeling language to map process interactions with blockchain data
 On-chain / off-chain data
 Other distributed ledger technologies
In a nutshell..

Blockchain

Blockchain
Second Int. Workshop on Security and Privacy-
enhanced Business Process Management
(SPBP’19), 2 September 2019, Vienna, Austria
Extra slides deck

Original process
Case study
Factory contract
Weber, Xu, Riveret, Governatori, Ponomarev, Mendling: Untrusted business process monitoring and execution using blockchain. In: Proc. of BPM, 329-347. Springer, 2016.

Intercepting new instantiations
From: factory
Contract code
New address

Intercepting new instantiations
From: factory
To: new instance

Intercepting calls to process contract
To: new instance
0x1387e74982055e3e1d235aad579350813b329b2b
From: actor

From transactions to events

Extracting Event Logs for Process Mining from Data Stored on the Blockchain

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