Method and system for controlling the performance of a contract using a distributed hash table and a peer-to-peer distributed ledger

Abstract

A computer-implemented method (100) and system (1) for controlling the performance of a smart contract. The method includes storing a contract on or in a computer-based repository. The contract is associated with a licence between a first user (U1) and a second user (U2). The method further includes receiving, over a communications network, a transaction comprising a transfer of a token from an agent (A) to the first user (U1) or the second user (U2). The transaction comprises metadata that includes an identifier indicative of a location where the contract is stored. The method further includes querying a peer-to-peer distributed ledger (i.e. blockchain) to determine whether the transaction comprises at least one unspent output (UTXO). The method further includes, responsive to querying the peer-to-peer distributed ledger, determining whether to modify performance of the contract. The blockchain may be the Bitcoin blockchain.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.