SYD: Building Trust in the Peer to Peer Wireless Network Confederation

Modern trends in Peer-to-Peer systems lean towards self organized communities based on peer contribution. The inherent difficulty encountered in such systems is that selfish peers that are mutually distrustful of each other are expected to cooperate in order to enjoy the benefit of consuming the resources shared through the p2p system. Furthermore, self organized p2p communities depend on free identities to retain their open nature and privacy requirements. Allowing the ability to change identities at will or to have multiple identities in a given community gives birth to certain attacks (known as Sybil attacks) that allow peers to consume without contributing and further increase distrust in the community. In this report we propose a new strategy Settle Your Debt (SYD) for members of the Peer to Peer Wireless Network Confederation (P2PWNC). We show that SYD avoids previous strategies’ vulnerability to Sybil attacks and helps to achieve a reasonably stable and thriving community without compromising the assumptions of peer selfishness and mutual distrust.