A decentralize incentive mechanism for P2P file sharing systems

As experience with P2P networks shows, the selfish behaviors of peers may lead to free-riding and tragedy of common. Most of the existing work is concerning probabilistic estimation to build reputation system to evaluate the trustworthiness for a peer to others. However, they can fail with positve probability and also suffer from long-term interaction. In this paper, we design a multiple-princiapl multiple-agent model that can provide incentives to peers in P2P file sharing networks in a way of Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism, while assuming every peer in P2P networks is rational and selfish, which means thay only concern about their own outcome. This mechanism has some desirable properties: incentive compatibility, individual rationality, and full decentralization. The implementation of our mechanism is complemented by a decentralized accouting scheme which provides accountability for appliations ina secure and scalable way. Simulation experiments are performed to provide evidence of the mechanism’s efficiency and reliability even in the presence of faulty or malicious peers.