Scalable, Secure, and Broad-Spectrum Mechanism for Enforcement of Protocols

Agents Interacting based on Protocols Invention Summary: There is a growing realization in the commercial world that trust among members of a multi-agent systems operating electronically over the Internet is needed.  Trust can be accomplished by enforcing (governing) electronically, a contract, policy, or another type of protocol to govern transactions among members. Rutgers researcher, Dr. Naftaly Minsky, has developed a novel control mechanism (“COP”) that governs interactions among members of multi-agent distributed systems — which can  include software processes, physical IoT devices, and people operating via diverse platforms—and can enforce a wide range of protocols over such interactions.  Such protocols may represent a contract that binds these actors, or it may be necessary for the actors to collaborate effectively on some common goal, or to compete safely over the use of resources. The COP mechanism is inherently decentralized, and it satisfies the following important qualities: (a) very low latency; (b) highly scalable; (c) supports interoperability  between systems operating subject to different protocols, and can, thus be applied to systems-of-systems; and (d) is considerably secure. Contrasts with Smart Contracts/Block Chain: Recently, commercial, financial and healthcare applications implemented using blockchain-based smart contracts have garnered attention.  This mechanism is quite secure, but its effective range of applications is limited due to constraints associated with latency, scalability, and limited interoperability.  The COP system can be used for similar purposes but overcomes these challenges associated with current smart contract/blockchain technologies. Advantages: Low latency between a transaction and its validation Scalable, secure & fault tolerant Applicable to most industries/applications Market Applications: Financial Transactions Supply chains, and other kind of systems-of-systems B2B commerce IoT:  Control systems, Sensors/Actuators Academic Publication: Minsky, Naftaly, and Chen Cong. "Scalable, Secure and Broad-Spectrum Enforcement of Contracts, Without Blockchains." arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.09940 (2019) Intellectual Property & Development Status: Patent pending. Available for licensing or collaboration.