smart contracts for service-level agreements in edge-to-cloud computing

The management of service-level agreements (slas) in edge-to-cloud computing is a complex task due to the great heterogeneity of computing infrastructures and networks and their varying runtime conditions, which influences the resulting quality of service (qos). sla-management should be supported by formal assurances, ranking and verification of various microservice deployment options. this work introduces a novel smart contract (sc) based architecture that provides for sla management among relevant entities and actors in a decentralised computing environment: virtual machines (vms), cloud service consumers and cloud providers. its key components are especially designed sc functions, a trustless smart oracle (chainlink) and a probabilistic markov decision process. the novel architecture is implemented on ethereum ledger (testnet). the results show its feasibility for sla management including low costs operation within dynamic and decentralised edge-to-cloud federations.