A case for evidence-aware distributed reputation systems overcoming the limitations of plausibility considerations

Abstract

Reputation systems support trust formation in artificial societies by keeping track of the behavior of autonomous entities. In the absence of any commonly trusted entity, the reputation system has to be distributed to the autonomous entities themselves. They may cooperate by issuing recommendations of other entities' trustworthiness. At the time being, distributed reputation systems rely on plausibility for assessing the truthfulness and consistency of such recommendations. In this paper, we point out the limitations of such plausibility considerations and present an alternative concept that is based on evidences. The concept combines the strengths of non-repudiability and distributed reputation systems. We analyze the issues that are related to the issuance and gathering of evidences. In this regard, we identify four patterns of how evidence-awareness overcomes the limitations of plausibility considerations. © Springer-Verlag 2004.