Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

BTrust: A New Blockchain-Based Trust Management Protocol for Resource Sharing

  • Published:
Journal of Network and Systems Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The emergence of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies opened the possibility for building novel peer-to-peer (P2P) resource allocation and sharing models. However, the trustless nature of these P2P models creates the need for reliable and effective trust and reputation mechanisms to minimize the risk of accessing or interacting with malicious peers. Blockchain technology, which is renowned for ensuring trust in trustless environments, provides us with new mechanisms to overcome the weaknesses of the existing reputation and trust management protocols. This paper proposes BTrust, an innovative decentralized and modular trust management system based on blockchain technology for evaluating trust in large-scale P2P networks. To quantify and assess the trustworthiness of peers and identify malicious peers, BTrust introduces a multi-dimensional trust and reputation model to represent trust and reputation scores in a single value derived from multiple parameters with appropriate weightings. Other contributions of this paper include the combination of recommendation and evidence-based approaches into a single system to provide a reliable and versatile way to compute trust in the network, an optimized trustless bootstrapping process to select trustworthy peers among neighbour peers and an incentive mechanism to encourage truthful feedback. We implement and evaluate the BTrust protocol using simulations and show that BTrust is highly resilient to failures and robust against malicious nodes.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/.

References

  1. Hosseini, M., Angelopoulos, C.M., Chai, W.K., Kundig, S.: Crowdcloud: a crowdsourced system for cloud infrastructure. Clust. Comput. 22(2), 455–470 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/S10586-018-2843-2

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Hamdaoui, B., Alkalbani, M., Rayes, A., Zorba, N.: IoTShare: A Blockchain-enabled IoT resource sharing on-demand protocol for smart city situation-awareness applications. IEEE Internet Things J. 7(10), 10548–10561 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Yao, H., Mai, T., Wang, J., Ji, Z., Jiang, C., Qian, Y.: Resource trading in blockchain-based industrial Internet of Things. IEEE Trans. Ind. Inform. 15(6), 3602–3609 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Banković, Z., Vallejo, J.C., Fraga, D., Moya, J.M.: Detecting bad-mouthing attacks on reputation systems using self-organizing maps. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 6694, pp. 9–16 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21323-6

  5. Sikorski, J.J., Haughton, J., Kraft, M.: Blockchain technology in the chemical industry: machine-to-machine electricity market. Appl. Energy 195, 234–246 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Fisch, B., Bonneau, J., Greco, N., Benet, J.: Scaling Proof-of-Replication for Filecoin Mining. Report. Protocol Labs Research (2018)

  7. Kondru, K.K., Saranya, R., Chacko, A.: A review of distributed supercomputing platforms using Blockchain. In: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems vol. 127, pp. 123–133 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4218-3

  8. Singh, R., Tanwar, S., Sharma, T.P.: Utilization of blockchain for mitigating the distributed denial of service attacks. Secur. Priv. 3(3), 96 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1002/SPY2.96

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Zhai, E., Wolinsky, D., Chen, R., Syta, E., Teng, C., Ford, B.: AnonRep: Towards Tracking-Resistant Anonymous Reputation (2016). usenix.org

  10. Gurtler, S., Goldberg, I.: SoK: privacy-preserving reputation systems. In: Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (2021). moria.petsymposium.org

  11. Garms, L., Quaglia, E.A.: A new approach to modelling centralised reputation systems. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 11627, pp. 429–447. Springer (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23696-0

  12. Zhou, R., Hwang, K.: PowerTrust: A Robust and Scalable Reputation System for Trusted Peer-to-Peer Computing *. Technical Report (2005). https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/4118688/

  13. El Kaafarani, A., Katsumata, S., Solomon, R.: Anonymous reputation systems achieving full dynamicity from lattices. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 10957, pp. 388–406. Springer (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-58387-6

  14. Blömer, J., Juhnke, J., Kolb, C.: Anonymous and publicly linkable reputation systems. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 8975, pp. 478–488. Springer (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47854-7

  15. Kamvar, S.D., Schlosser, M.T., Garcia-Molina, H.: The EigenTrust algorithm for reputation management in P2P networks. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on World Wide Web, WWW 2003, pp. 640–651 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1145/775152.775242

  16. Kurdi, H.A.: HonestPeer: an enhanced EigenTrust algorithm for reputation management in P2P systems. J. King Saud Univ. Comput. Inf. Sci. 27(3), 315–322 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Xiong, L., Liu, L.: PeerTrust: supporting reputation-based trust for peer-to-peer electronic communities NNexus View project Deep Learning on Graph View project. IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. 3, 1 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2004.1318566

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Emanuele, B., Youssef, I., Damiani, E.: Blockchain-based distributed trust and reputation management systems: a survey. IEEE Access 8, 21127–21151 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Sharples, M., Domingue, J.: The Blockchain and kudos: a distributed system for educational record, reputation and reward. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 9891, pp. 490–496 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45153-4

  20. Cinque, M., Esposito, C., Russo, S.: Trust management in fog/edge computing by means of Blockchain technologies. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData), pp. 1433–1439. IEEE (2018)

  21. Moinet, A., Darties, B., Baril, J.-L.: Blockchain based trust and authentication for decentralized sensor networks (2017). arXiv:arxiv:1706.01730

  22. Di Pietro, R., Salleras, X., Signorini, M., Waisbard, E.: A Blockchain-based trust system for the Internet of Things. In: Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies, SACMAT, pp. 77–83. Association for Computing Machinery, (2018). https://doi.org/10.1145/3205977.3205993

  23. Yang, Z., Yang, K., Lei, L., Zheng, K., Leung, V.C.M.: Blockchain-based decentralized trust management in vehicular networks. IEEE Internet Things J. 6(2), 1495–1505 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2018.2836144

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Lu, Z., Wang, Q., Qu, G., Liu, Z.: BARS: a Blockchain-based anonymous reputation system for trust management in VANETs. In: Proceedings—17th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications and 12th IEEE International Conference on Big Data Science and Engineering, Trustcom/BigDataSE 2018, pp. 98–103 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1109/TRUSTCOM/BIGDATASE.2018.00025

  25. Buechler, M., Eerabathini, M., Hockenbrocht, C., Wan, D.: Decentralized Reputation System for Transaction Networks. Technical report, University of Pennsylvania, Tech. Rep. (2015)

  26. Schaub, A., Bazin, R., Hasan, O., Brunie, L.: A trustless privacy-preserving reputation system. IFIP Adv. Inf. Commun. Technol. 471, 398–411 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33630-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Kiperberg, M., Resh, A., Zaidenberg, N.J.: Remote Attestation of Software and Execution-Environment in Modern Machines. Technical Report. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7371504/

  28. Nakamoto, S.: Bitcoin : A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Decentralized Business Review, p.21260 (2008)

  29. Buterin, V.: A next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform. Ethereum White Paper (January), 1–36 (2014)

  30. Szabo, N.: Formalizing and securing relationships on public networks. First Monday (1997). firstmonday.org

  31. Dennis, R., Owen, G.: Rep on the block: a next generation reputation system based on the Blockchain. In: 2015 10th International Conference for Internet Technology and Secured Transactions, ICITST 2015, pp. 131–138 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICITST.2015.7412073

  32. McConaghy, T., Marques, R., et al.: BigchainDB: a scalable Blockchain database. git.berlin (2016)

  33. Gattermayer, J., Tvrdik, P.: Blockchain-based multi-level scoring system for P2P clusters. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops, pp. 301–308 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPPW.2017.50

  34. Zou, J., Ye, B., Qu, L., Wang, Y., Orgun, M.A., Li, L.: A Proof-of-Trust consensus protocol for enhancing accountability in crowdsourcing services. IEEE Trans. Serv. Comput. 12(3), 429–445 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1109/TSC.2018.2823705

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Alowayed, Y., Canini, M., Marcos, P., Chiesa, M., Barcellos, M.: Picking a partner: a fair Blockchain based scoring protocol for autonomous systems. In: ANRW 2018—Proceedings of the 2018 Applied Networking Research Workshop, pp. 33–39 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1145/3232755.3232785

  36. Neureither, J., Dmitrienko, A., Koisser, D., Brasser, F., Sadeghi, A.R.: LegIoT: ledgered trust management platform for IoT. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 12308, pp. 377–396. Springer (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58951-6

  37. Javaid, A., Zahid, M., Ali, I., Ul Hassan Khan, R.J., Noshad, Z., Javaid, N.: Reputation system for IoT data monetization using Blockchain. In: 14th International Conference on Broad-Band Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA 2019), University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium, vol. 97, pp. 173–184. Springer (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33506-9

  38. Moinet, A., Darties, B., Baril, J.L.: Blockchain based trust and authentication for decentralized sensor networks. arXiv (2017)

  39. Di Pietro, R., Salleras, X., Signorini, M., Waisbard, E.: A Blockchain-based trust system for the Internet of Things. In: SACMAT ’18: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM on Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies, pp. 77–83 (2018). dl.acm.org. https://doi.org/10.1145/3205977.3205993

  40. Yildirim, I.: Bayesian Inference: Metropolis–Hastings Sampling. Technical Report (2012). http://www.cmpe.boun.edu.tr/courses/cmpe58n/fall2009/

  41. Kwong, K., Tsang, D.H.K.: Building heterogeneous peer-to-peer networks: protocol and analysis. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 16(2), 281–292 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. RAISS Laboratory, INPT, Rabat, Morocco

    Badr Bellaj, Aafaf Ouaddah & Abdellatif Mezrioui

  2. SAMOVAR Laboratory, Institut Politechnique de Paris, Paris, France

    Badr Bellaj & Noel Crespi

  3. R&D, Orange Lab, Cean, France

    Emmanuel Bertin

  4. R&D, Mchain, Rabat, Morocco

    Khalid Bellaj

Authors
  1. Badr Bellaj
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Aafaf Ouaddah
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Emmanuel Bertin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Noel Crespi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Abdellatif Mezrioui
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Khalid Bellaj
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Badr Bellaj.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bellaj, B., Ouaddah, A., Bertin, E. et al. BTrust: A New Blockchain-Based Trust Management Protocol for Resource Sharing. J Netw Syst Manage 30, 64 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10922-022-09674-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10922-022-09674-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation