A Layered Architecture and Taxonomy for Blockchain-empowered Reputation-based Reward Systems

Abstract

Blockchain based rating and review systems have changed the operational structure of the traditional market by introducing characteristics like immutability, security, anonymity etc. to liberate users from potential malicious acts of sellers such as altering and hiding ratings or reviews, collusion with users or service providers. The lack of standardization for developing decentralized applications does not depict flow of information and cataloguing of specific functions and roles for a particular set of tasks. The development of decentralized applications for e-commerce systems is in its immature age of progress and has lack of interoperable sharing of data and workflows for new innate systems. Thus, it is significant to catalogue blockchain-based rating and review systems by identifying key parameters to generate a taxonomy and develop a conceptual layered framework for identifying core components and their interaction. This manuscript presents a substantial analysis of existing blockchain-empowered reputation-based reward systems. It uses an iterative approach following observed to rational and rational to observed for taxonomy development. The analysis results identify 11 key parameters for categorizing systems and propose a 4 layered architecture to signify IPFS, P2P network, Blockchain and DApps. The proposed model identifies underlying subsystems, their services, and their interaction. The new taxonomy identifies natural roadmaps in system development process. This study is key because it allows developers to design new reputation-based reward framework in different dimensions by following an open workflow with a common understanding of underlying core entities.