Trust and reputation management in decentralized systems
Date
2010-09
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Degree Level
Doctoral
Abstract
In large, open and distributed systems, agents are often used to represent users and act on their behalves. Agents can provide good or bad services or act honestly or dishonestly. Trust and reputation mechanisms are used to distinguish good services from bad ones or honest agents from dishonest ones. My research is focused on trust and reputation management in decentralized systems. Compared with centralized systems, decentralized systems are more difficult and inefficient for agents to find and collect information to build trust and reputation.
In this thesis, I propose a Bayesian network-based trust model. It provides a flexible way to present differentiated trust and combine different aspects of trust that can meet agents’ different needs. As a complementary element, I propose a super-agent based approach that facilitates reputation management in decentralized networks. The idea of allowing super-agents to form interest-based communities further enables flexible reputation management among groups of agents. A reward mechanism creates incentives for super-agents to contribute their resources and to be honest. As a single package, my work is able to promote effective, efficient and flexible trust and reputation management in decentralized systems.
Description
Keywords
super-agent, reward, communities
Citation
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department
Computer Science
Program
Computer Science