Online rating system development using blockchain-based distributed ledger technology

Abstract

In most websites, the online rating system provides the ratings of products and services to users. Lack of trust in data integrity and its manipulation has hindered fulfilling user satisfaction. Since existing online rating systems deal with a central server, all rating data is stored on the central server. Therefore, all rating data can be removed, modified, and manipulated by the system manager to change the ratings in favor of the service or product provider. In this paper, an online rating system using distributed ledger technologies has been presented as the proposed system to solve all the weaknesses of current systems. Distributed ledger technologies are completely decentralized and there is no centralization on them by any institution. Distributed ledger technologies have different variants. Among distributed ledger technologies, blockchain technology has been used in the proposed rating system because of its support for smart contracts. In the proposed online rating system, the Ethereum platform has been chosen from different blockchain platforms that have a public permission network. In this system, the raters cannot rate unless they submit a request to the system and be authorized to take part in the online product rating process. The important feature of the Ethereum platform is its support for smart contracts, which can be used to write the rating contract in the Solidity language. Also, using Proof of Authority consensus mechanisms, all rating transactions are approved by the surveyors. Since in the real Ethereum system, each rating transaction is sent to the network by the raters, some gas must be paid for each rating transaction. However, since this method is expensive, TestNet blockchain can be used in the rating system. Finally, the proposed rating system was used for rating the restaurants of a website and its features were tested.