Decentralized Cloud Scheduling via Smart Contracts. Operational constraints and costs

The applications of Blockchain and Smart Contracts cover all aspects of digital information processing, varying from Asset Management platforms to Online Shops and Digital Identity Management. Several start-up companies and fellow researchers are interested in creating decentralized Clouds using the Blockchain as the mechanism for synchronization, identity management, and payment. This paper presents a conceptual platform exploiting Ethereum Smart Contracts to handle resource scheduling for Cloud Applications, investigates the operational constraints and measures the cost and latency for three scheduling strategies. In addition, it presents the constraints under which instances can be terminated asynchronously, which increases the cost of the transaction. The minimum cost for executing an application is similar to paying 12 hours for a standard Virtual Machine in today's Clouds if the Smart Contracts are deployed on the Ethereum Network, which limits the interest of users with short running applications.