Incentives for Combatting Freeriding on P2P Networks

We address the freerider problem on P2P networks. We first propose a specific participation metric, which we call a peer’s EigenTrust score. We show that EigenTrust scores accurately capture several different participation criteria. We then propose an incentive scheme that may be used in conjunction with any numerical participation metric. We show that, when these incentives are used in conjunction with EigenTrust scores, they reward participatory peers but don’t exclude less active peers.