A Stream Pipeline Framework for Digital Payment Programming based on Smart Contracts

ArXiv ID: 2508.21075 “View on arXiv”

Authors: Zijia Meng, Victor Feng

Abstract

Digital payments play a pivotal role in the burgeoning digital economy. Moving forward, the enhancement of digital payment systems necessitates programmability, going beyond just efficiency and convenience, to meet the evolving needs and complexities. Smart contract platforms like Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) networks and blockchains support programmable digital payments. However, the prevailing paradigm of programming payment logics involves coding smart contracts with programming languages, leading to high costs and significant security challenges. A novel and versatile method for payment programming on DLTs was presented in this paper - transforming digital currencies into token streams, then pipelining smart contracts to authorize, aggregate, lock, direct, and dispatch these streams efficiently from source to target accounts. By utilizing a small set of configurable templates, a few specialized smart contracts could be generated, and support most of payment logics through configuring and composing them. This approach could substantially reduce the cost of payment programming and enhance security, self-enforcement, adaptability, and controllability, thus hold the potential to become an essential component in the infrastructure of digital economy.

Keywords: digital payments, smart contracts, programmable payments, token streams, DLT, Crypto

Complexity vs Empirical Score

  • Math Complexity: 3.0/10
  • Empirical Rigor: 2.0/10
  • Quadrant: Philosophers
  • Why: The paper proposes a conceptual framework (stream-oriented programming) with minimal advanced mathematics, but lacks any data, backtests, or implementation metrics, relying purely on theoretical discussion and analogies.
  flowchart TD
    A["Research Goal<br>How to improve programmability, security,<br>and cost-effectiveness of digital payments<br>on DLTs?"] --> B["Key Methodology<br>Introduce Stream Pipeline Framework:<br>Transform currencies to token streams,<br>pipeline smart contracts for processing"]
    B --> C["Data/Inputs<br>Payment Logic Requirements<br>Smart Contract Templates<br>Source & Target Account Data"]
    C --> D["Computational Processes<br>1. Authorize<br>2. Aggregate<br>3. Lock<br>4. Direct<br>5. Dispatch<br>via Configurable Pipelines"]
    D --> E["Key Findings/Outcomes<br>Reduced Programming Cost<br>Enhanced Security & Self-Enforcement<br>High Adaptability & Controllability<br>Essential Digital Economy Infrastructure"]