SBO project: SODISA: Scalable Software Development and Infrastructure for Self-sovereign Applications

The SODISA project is about Scalable Software Development and Infrastructure for Selfsovereign Applications. Self-sovereign applications, also known as Decentralized Applications or simply "Dapps" are applications where (part of) the application state and logic are maintained by a decentralized group of participants. This is in contrast to the majority of today’s (Web) applications where application state and logic typically reside with a single (centralized) controlling party which must be fully trusted. Dapps are seen as an emerging new type of software that is potentially more trusted, transparent and auditable than current centralized applications.
The premise of SODISA is that the state of software engineering for Dapps today is still in its infancy compared to the solid engineering practices that characterize modern Mobile, Web and Cloud applications. The objective of SODISA is therefore to contribute tools, techniques and components to the state-of-the-art that make the development of Dapps less complex (improve developer productivity), safer (improve application security) and more scalable in terms of the size of application state and the runtime cost of executing the logic (through improved distributed consistency protocols). This will be achieved through research  focusing on better software development tools for bug prediction and debugging, safer blockchain execution layers and novel hybrid (strong and eventual) consistency models. To carry forward this research, SODISA brings together the complementary expertise of three research groups: 1) DistriNet KU Leuven (campus Arenberg) with expertise on blockchain and consensus protocols, smart contracts, software security & privacy, and software engineering; 2) DistriNet KU Leuven (campus Groep-T) with expertise on enterprise application platforms, access control, cloud computing; 3) SOFT VUB with expertise on debugging and data replication protocols.