Abstract
Trustworthy applications in fully decentralized systems require a trust anchor. However, in p2p systems there does not exist a central trust anchor. This paper describes how a distributed anchor can be implemented efficiently in such and environment. Different alternatives have been proposed in the literature; most of them suggesting distributing the trust anchor by using a quorum decision, assuming that a random quorum would ensure trustworthiness. However, there are major issues, e.g., can it be assumed that a quorum was actually randomly chosen? how can it be verified, that a signature was created by a truly random quorum? In this paper a solution for this is presented through the token-based accounting scheme using specific mechanisms that ensure a distributed trust anchor in p2p systems and its evaluation.
© 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
