Towards a market managed peer-to-peer file sharing system using token-based accounting and distributed pricing

Abstract

This paper presents a token-based accounting mechanism that alleviates the free riding problem in P2P networks. On the basis of a P2P file sharing scenario it is shown how tokens are issued, certified and used as a payment in a secure and scalable way. The approach is complemented by distributed pricing as a flexible and viable scheme to incite users to share valuable content and to efficiently balance requests among all peers based on economic decisions.