Cooperation Incentive Schemes

Decentralized systems, like peer-to-peer and ad hoc systems, may address scalability through the handing of system operational mechanisms over to the entities forming the system, in an autonomous manner. This paradigm raises concerns, in particular with respect to the establishment of trust between such entities, to the stimulation of their cooperation, and to the fairness of their respective contributions. This report surveys the cooperation incentive schemes that respond to these concerns, and that provide, given the diversity of cooperation techniques, many ways to manage resources and to control collaborating entities. This report first reviews application domains where collaboration between entities is required and enforced. The report then goes on to detail the cooperation incentive mechanisms, which can be categorized basically as reputation and remuneration based. Means of validating cooperation incentives are finally discussed. 2 This work was also supported by the GET (Groupement des Ecoles de Télécoms) Initiative research program on autonomic and spontaneous networks, the ACI SI MOSAIC project, and the PACALAB research project.