Abstract: Methods and systems are disclosed for managing cloud services using smart contracts to facilitate various functions, such as tenant login, tenant enrollment, service registration, tenant usage charging, tenant usage tracking, tenant quota management, and tenant rights revocation. The proposed techniques allow tenant and service accounts to be represented as smart contracts, and for services to delegate authorization for bundles of service attributes to tenants and other services, for which the tenants and services are then charged. The business logic is implemented on a permissioned, distributed ledger (e.g., a private blockchain) and therefore is easily customized for specific classes of tenants and services.

Abstract: Methods and systems for authorizing the access of a service are described. A server is operative to receive a request to subscribe to a service. The server is to receive from the requestor a selected service offer from the set of service offers, where the selected service offer is cryptographically signed with the private key of the requestor and the private key of the service. The server is further to record a delegation contract into a blockchain database, where the delegation contract includes an identification of the service, an identification of the requestor, and the service offer that is cryptographically signed with the private keys of the requestor and the service. The server is to transmit, to the requestor, a confirmation that the service can be accessed based on the selected service offer; and transmit to the service the delegation contract causing the service to provide access to the requestor.

Abstract: A method and a network device in a cloud computing system, including a first blockchain component that is one of a plurality of blockchain components forming a blockchain system, of dynamic discovery of another blockchain component of the blockchain system are described. A multicast address including a multicast group identifier is generated. The multicast group identifier is generated at least in part based on a genesis block identifier that uniquely identifies a blockchain serviced by the blockchain system. The network device joins a multicast group identified by the multicast group identifier; and transmits a message destined to the multicast address, where the message includes a request for a unicast address of another component of the blockchain system.