A Secure and Efficient State Channels-Based Network Service Business Settlement Scheme

With the continuous innovation of network technology, emerging network service models have begun to be proposed, which also puts forward higher requirements for business settlement. Business settlement, as the foundation of network services, involves the interests of users and service providers. The traditional centralized settlement schemes no longer respond to the needs of both parties in terms of transparency, security, and fairness. Therefore, some blockchain-based settlement solutions have been proposed to address these issues. However, due to the additional overhead brought by blockchain, it is difficult for these solutions to ensure both security and efficiency. In this paper, we propose a state channels-based business settlement scheme (SCBS) to complete network service settlement securely and efficiently. In SCBS, the settlement process can be effectively carried out off-chain. When non-cooperative behavior occurs, both parties can create, resolve, and refute the dispute through the state channel to assure safety. Finally, the test results from Hyperledger Fabric platform demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our SCBS.