Q&A on Smart Contracts and EUREKA

What is your role in the EUREKA project?

I’m part of tech team which is developing the EUREKA platform, and I’m responsible for the smart contracts and the interfaces between the smart contracts and the backend and frontend.

Describe the culture within the tech team.

It’s collegial and with a low level hierarchy. Everyone helps each other and you can always ask someone for help. Sometimes when we’re stuck with a problem, it’s helpful to explain to someone else what the problem is. Everyone wants to understand what the other team members are doing. The challenging environment is broadening my horizons. And the surroundings here at Trust Square are perfect. The first day I had problem with smart contracts testing and I could just consult another guy sitting at Dezentrum and he helped me immediately.

What is a smart contract?

A smart contract is the most important thing for any decentralized application on the Ethereum blockchain, I would say. In EUREKA’s case, it’s a contract which contains the logic about the review process and other processes which relate to the science publishing ecosystem. The frontend and backend of the EUREKA platform communicate with the smart contracts on the blockchain.

Is there more than one smart contract?

There is actually more than one smart contract. We have a base EUREKA contract, and we are working on another contract interacting with the base contract. But there’s no limit to the number of smart contracts that can interact with the EUREKA contract.

What are some of features of these smart contracts?

It’s useful to start off by thinking of the application of these smart contracts to the publishing process. As I said earlier, we’re working on two different contracts: one for the EUREKA platform and one for the EUREKA token. The whole process starts with the submission of an article respectively with the storage of the hash of an article on the blockchain. The initial transaction is sent to the EUREKA token smart contract, and if the transaction of EUREKA tokens is successful the token contract calls a function on the platform contract. For example, this function can store the article metadata and starts the submission process.

What is the EUREKA platform?

EUREKA is a blockchain-based reviewing and rating platform for science publishing. ScienceMatters is the first client of EUREKA and potentially many other publishing platform could follow. The platform works like this: we get a URL which points generally said to article information and content. We hash the article with SHA-256 and save it with a timestamp and author and linked article references on the blockchain. Since a hash function delivers always the same output from the same input and it is very very difficult to find another input with the same output. On the EUREKA platform we are able to reward the linked (or cited) authors, reviewers, and editors associated with an article with EUREKA tokens. It’s all done by smart contracts.

What makes the EUREKA platform unique?

We already have customers on the existing ScienceMatters platform. We can use the existing publishing ecosystem and database, and the community already exists. So it’s easier to achieve our goal of a community-based platform. Our major advantage with EUREKA is that we can reward and incentivize all parties involved easily with micropayments which are executed automatically.

From a technical perspective, what are the advantages or disadvantages of using blockchain for a science publishing ecosystem?

I believe that there are several advantages. The big advantage is for replication studies. On the EUREKA smart contract it is possible to lock some tokens to incentivise reproducibility studies. For example, in drug trials, a lot of time and money is wasted by the pharmaceutical on trying to reproduce research which is actually not reproducible. This industry has an opportunity to save time and money.

There’s also the advantage that it’s all connectable to a foundation. For example, in the field of computer studies a part of the submission fee could go to microfund for a conference. If there are not enough accepted articles by a certain point in time then the conference won’t take place and the tokens are returned to the authors. Another advantage would be for foundations and research funds. Research funds can found journals and have micropayments paid to researchers in specific fields. We offer an elegant and simple solutions for all these cases.

And don’t forget that publishing on blockchain is immutable and timestamped. It means that you can prove that ownership immediately after discovery. It makes the whole process of publication faster and there is no need to rely on trust between people alone.

What are some of the technical challenges of “migrating” from an existing publishing platform, like ScienceMatters, to a publishing system on blockchain, like EUREKA?

The major challenge is to get academia onboard. Because academics, for the most part, are people who are not familiar with the crypto space. It’s a question of adoption. The solution is to provide services and support for those not familiar with the space.

Which blockchain are you using?

The Ethereum blockchain. For the EUREKA token we have chosen to use the ERC677 token which is based on the ERC20. The advantage of using this ERC677 is that it makes sure that the transfer is done safely and if so the next function is triggered automatically. This is done by the transferAndCall-method. The smart contract is written in Solidity which is the most popular Ethereum smart contract language.

What are some of the challenges which lie ahead in term of the implementation of this technology?

Adoption of the technology is the major challenge. Think about comparing a decentralised application to an existing platform. Imagine two editors working at a journal, checking published articles and assigning articles to reviewers. In a decentralized application each editor assigns him/herself to an article with its own key and gets the reward to its own wallet. What happens if one editor is suddenly not able to edit the articles he assigned for. In a centralized application this is quite easy to handle. In a decentralized app you need to make sure, that the journal (ScienceMatters or any other client) has the permissions to reassign editors.