Incentive Mechanisms in Peer-to-Peer Networks — A Systematic Literature Review

Centralized networks inevitably exhibit single points of failure that malicious actors regularly target. Decentralized networks are more resilient if numerous participants contribute to the network’s functionality. Most decentralized networks employ incentive mechanisms to coordinate the participation and cooperation of peers and thereby ensure the functionality and security of the network. This article systematically reviews incentive mechanisms for decentralized networks and networked systems by covering 165 prior literature reviews and 178 primary research papers published between 1993 and October 2022. Of the considered sources, we analyze 11 literature reviews and 105 primary research papers in detail by categorizing and comparing the distinctive properties of the presented incentive mechanisms. The reviewed incentive mechanisms establish fairness and reward participation and cooperative behavior. We review work that substitutes central authority through independent and subjective mechanisms run in isolation at each participating peer and work that applies multiparty computation. We use monetary, reputation, and service rewards as categories to differentiate the implementations and evaluate each incentive mechanism’s data management, attack resistance, and contribution model. Further, we highlight research gaps and deficiencies in reproducibility and comparability. Finally, we summarize our assessments and provide recommendations to apply incentive mechanisms to decentralized networks that share computational resources

State-Of-The-Art and Prospects for Peer-To-Peer Transaction-Based Energy System

Transaction-based energy (TE) management and control has become an increasingly relevant topic, attracting considerable attention from industry and the research community alike. As a result, new techniques are emerging for its development and actualization. This paper presents a comprehensive review of TE involving peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading and also covering the concept, enabling technologies, frameworks, active research efforts and the prospects of TE. The formulation of a common approach for TE management modelling is challenging given the diversity of circumstances of prosumers in terms of capacity, profiles and objectives. This has resulted in divergent opinions in the literature. The idea of this paper is therefore to explore these viewpoints and provide some perspectives on this burgeoning topic on P2P TE systems. This study identified that most of the techniques in the literature exclusively formulate energy trade problems as a game, an optimization problem or a variational inequality problem. It was also observed that none of the existing works has considered a unified messaging framework. This is a potential area for further investigation

Intimate technologies for development: micro-philanthropy, crowdfunding platforms, and NGO fundraising in India

This thesis presents an account of my research on crowdfunding platforms and their nongovernmental organization (NGO) partners in India. The current era of increasing reliance on technological advancement pressures the international development sector to innovate and digitize its programs and aid delivery. Crowdfunding platforms evolved in this technological climate to fill certain gaps between individuals and social projects. NGOs are compelled to diversify and innovate their fundraising strategies to keep up with industry standards and appeal to wider networks of individual donors. The primary research question addressed in this thesis is whether new fundraising models like crowdfunding are changing the overall landscape of development aid and NGO practice, particularly in India. I also investigate the emergent popularity of crowdfunding platforms and what this discloses about the relationship between Indian ‘micro-philanthropists’ and local NGOs. I have comprised this thesis of nine chapters segmented into three broader sections: Section I – Premise, Section II – Platforms, and Section III – Peer-to-Peer Fundraising. Section I outlines the premise for my research, covering the methodology, Indian context, and theoretical framework. Through semi-structured interviews, I gathered data from 6 crowdfunding platforms and 25 NGOs, in addition to on-site observations and online analysis. I then introduce the Indian context for my research, as India is currently undergoing a dynamic period of technological, political, and social change. Section I concludes with the theoretical and conceptual framework for this thesis. I situate crowdfunding at the nexus of three major bodies of literature: philanthrocapitalism, ICT4D, and digital inequalities and affordances, as well as the sub-themes of brokerage, citizen aid, and social media. Section II focuses primarily on ethnographic data gathered from 6 crowdfunding platforms. I discuss international crowdfunding practices for NGO fundraising, focusing on interviews with US-based platform GlobalGiving and their sister organization GlobalGiving UK. I explore how crowdfunding differs from mainstream top-down aid practices, and what role it aims to play in NGO fundraising. I then introduce the 4 Indian platforms I researched - Impact Guru, Ketto, LetzChange, and Small Change – and analyze key differences between the Indian and international crowdfunding platforms. I discuss how platforms appeal to NGOs and seek to distinguish themselves from each other. This Section concludes with data collected from NGOs operating in India, the majority of which use the crowdfunding platforms I researched. Section III focuses on the intimate and interpersonal aspects of NGO crowdfunding in India. I first explore trust in the Indian giving sector by discussing historical practices of giving and the pervasive levels of distrust that mark the Indian NGO sector. I detail how crowdfunding platforms help local NGOs rebrand themselves through marketing that harnesses the ‘technological intimacies’ of their existing social capital and interpersonal connections through social media and digital communications practices. At the center of my analysis lies an exploration of the nature of digital divides and inequalities, examining peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising models and exploring how Indian crowdfunding platforms aim to blend existing intimate social bonds with the leverage of new technologies like social media and WhatsApp. I conclude the thesis by discussing whether crowdfunding platforms have created anything truly ‘new’ or if they have simply evolved existing practices into digital spaces

Architectures for the Future Networks and the Next Generation Internet: A Survey

Networking research funding agencies in the USA, Europe, Japan, and other countries are encouraging research on revolutionary networking architectures that may or may not be bound by the restrictions of the current TCP/IP based Internet. We present a comprehensive survey of such research projects and activities. The topics covered include various testbeds for experimentations for new architectures, new security mechanisms, content delivery mechanisms, management and control frameworks, service architectures, and routing mechanisms. Delay/Disruption tolerant networks, which allow communications even when complete end-to-end path is not available, are also discussed

Trans-European Retail Banking: Challenges to New Entrants and Integration in European Retail Banking

Policy makers continue to be concerned by the lack of integration in European retail banking. Regulatory harmonisation may reduce entry costs, but is unlikely to stimulate enough cross-border competition to bring visible consumer benefits. Competition that fosters real cross-border integration is more likely to be triggered by an outsider that introduces qualitatively different services, business models and technologies to what is still a fairly static, concentrated market structure. This paper discusses the advantages and persistent challenges a new entrant would face if it were to attempt to develop a compelling cross border retail banking service in Europe.Given Brussels' stated preference for a market-led process of integration, single market policy should focus more on removing barriers to innovative new entrants than on efforts to harmonise rules based on existing business models. Competition authorities should be supported in their investigations into regulatory and commercial restrictions on access to payment networks and systems. Further steps towards an EU supervisory authority may also help reduce regulatory uncertainty that weighs disproportionately on banks seeking to introduce new pan-European business models.

Electronic Payment Systems Observatory (ePSO). Newsletter Issues 9-15

Abstract not availableJRC.J-Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (Seville

A Decade of Research in Fog computing: Relevance, Challenges, and Future Directions

Recent developments in the Internet of Things (IoT) and real-time applications, have led to the unprecedented growth in the connected devices and their generated data. Traditionally, this sensor data is transferred and processed at the cloud, and the control signals are sent back to the relevant actuators, as part of the IoT applications. This cloud-centric IoT model, resulted in increased latencies and network load, and compromised privacy. To address these problems, Fog Computing was coined by Cisco in 2012, a decade ago, which utilizes proximal computational resources for processing the sensor data. Ever since its proposal, fog computing has attracted significant attention and the research fraternity focused at addressing different challenges such as fog frameworks, simulators, resource management, placement strategies, quality of service aspects, fog economics etc. However, after a decade of research, we still do not see large-scale deployments of public/private fog networks, which can be utilized in realizing interesting IoT applications. In the literature, we only see pilot case studies and small-scale testbeds, and utilization of simulators for demonstrating scale of the specified models addressing the respective technical challenges. There are several reasons for this, and most importantly, fog computing did not present a clear business case for the companies and participating individuals yet. This paper summarizes the technical, non-functional and economic challenges, which have been posing hurdles in adopting fog computing, by consolidating them across different clusters. The paper also summarizes the relevant academic and industrial contributions in addressing these challenges and provides future research directions in realizing real-time fog computing applications, also considering the emerging trends such as federated learning and quantum computing.Comment: Accepted for publication at Wiley Software: Practice and Experience journa