Intermediary Blockchain for Cross-Merchant Loyalty Exchange
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing loyalty programs face challenges in facilitating the exchange of loyalty points across different merchants' systems, as most merchants do not recognize points awarded by other merchants, making it difficult for consumers to seamlessly transfer and utilize their rewards.
Innovation Solution
An intermediary blockchain system and broker agent software facilitate the exchange of loyalty assets by using smart contracts to create temporary trading addresses, enabling secure and instantaneous transactions between users on different blockchain systems, without requiring trust in the broker agent.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If merchants use separate loyalty point systems, then each merchant can independently manage their loyalty program, but consumers cannot exchange loyalty points between different merchants
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a broker agent as an intermediary component that mediates between multiple merchant blockchain systems. The broker agent receives exchange requests, identifies matching requests, and coordinates the atomic transactions between different merchants' blockchain networks, enabling loyalty point exchange without requiring direct integration between all merchant systems.
2Ease of operation
If a centralized database is used to manage loyalty points, then transaction validation is simplified, but the system loses decentralization and requires a central intermediary
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the loyalty point management system into independent merchant-specific blockchain networks, each maintaining their own ledger and validation rules. The broker agent coordinates between these segmented systems without consolidating data into a single centralized database, preserving both decentralization and individual system autonomy while enabling cross-merchant transactions.
3Productivity
If loyalty point exchanges are processed manually, then system complexity is reduced, but transaction speed and efficiency decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The broker agent implements automated matching logic that autonomously identifies compatible exchange requests, verifies transaction conditions, and coordinates atomic transactions without requiring manual intervention. The system self-manages the complexity of matching and coordination, freeing users from manual processes while maintaining transaction speed and efficiency.
Data Source
AI summary
An example operation may include one or more of identifying a first conferred asset exchange request from a first user account and a second conferred asset exchange request from a second user account which are capable of being used to settle each other, requesting an intermediary blockchain to perform a conferred asset settlement transaction for the first and second conferred asset exchange requests, determining that first conferred assets of the first user account and second conferred assets of the second user account have been transferred to temporary intermediary trading addresses, respectively, and releasing the first conferred assets to the second user account and the second loyalty assets to the first user account, in response to the determining.