US 12,437,033 B1
Smart contracts for licensing
Ramkumar Chandrasekharan, San Francisco, CA (US); Nathaniel G. McKervey, Tallahassee, FL (US); Kishore Reddy Ramasayam, San Francisco, CA (US); and Antoine Toulme, San Francisco, CA (US)
Filed by Splunk Inc., San Francisco, CA (US)
Filed on Jan. 31, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/589,713.
Int. Cl. G06F 21/10 (2013.01); H04L 9/08 (2006.01)
CPC G06F 21/105 (2013.01) [G06Q 2220/18 (2013.01); H04L 9/0825 (2013.01); H04L 2209/56 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
receiving, by a computing device that is associated with a data intake and query system and executes a smart contract, a first request by a first requester to perform a first processing operation via the data intake and query system, wherein an identity of the first requester is validated by a hash algorithm, the first request including data that uniquely identifies a first account of a blockchain and a uniquely identifies a transaction on the blockchain that has already occurred, wherein the transaction involves the first account, and wherein the blockchain is implemented on a plurality of nodes, wherein the first request is signed by a private key associated with the first account, wherein the first account is a verified account and is not a blocked account;
decrypting, with a corresponding public key, the signed first request to verify its authenticity;
in response to successfully verifying the first request, determining that an operation of the blockchain in processing the transaction transferred a predetermined number of tokens from the first account to a second account of the blockchain, wherein the tokens are generated and managed by the blockchain, wherein the predetermined number of tokens were anonymously transferred to the first account, and wherein the tokens are associated with performing one or more of a plurality of processing operations via the data intake and query system that are based on event data generated from raw machine data produced within an information technology environment;
in response to determining that the blockchain transferred the predetermined number of tokens from the first account to the second account, executing, by the computing device, the smart contract to perform the first processing operation via the data intake and query system, wherein the first processing operation comprises at least one of transforming at least a portion of the raw machine data into searchable event data or processing the searchable event data; and
in response to performing of the first processing operation via the data intake and query system, updating a distributed ledger that the transaction has been used and transmitting a second request to the blockchain to remove the predetermined number of tokens from the second account, wherein updating the distributed ledger that the transaction has been used prevents a second operating from being performed which uniquely identifies that transaction.