Towards Engineering Trustworthy Distributed Reputation Systems Over The Blockchain

Abstract: Peer-to-peer (P2P) reputation systems, such as those used by eBay and Amazon, servean important role on the web, especially in E-commerce, as online reputation serves asa primary guiding factor for consumers in making informed decisions. The importanceof these systems, and also the increasing popularity of P2P and distributed systems, theissue of how to prevent and resist sybil and re-entry attacks becomes an important area ofresearch as they can impinge the integrity of those systems. To address this issue, in thisthesis, we propose an approach that encompasses a software architecture and processeswhich serves as a proof-of-concept of how to mitigate sybil and re-entry attacks on review based P2P distributed reputation systems. The architecture uses novel technologiessuch as blockchain, smart contracts, and non-fungible tokens (NFT) in conjunction withSwedish E-id provider BankID to build a sybil and re-entry attack resistant reputationsystem. To validate the feasibility of our approach, we developed a prototype and used itto run experiments to evaluate the functional correctness of the architecture as a mitigation solution