Blockchain-based incentive management framework for desktop clouds

Desktop clouds connect several desktop computers into a cloud computing architecture to reap the potential of untapped commodity computing power over the Internet. In desktop clouds, what benefit (incentive) a participant will get for sharing its computational resources, and how participants will contribute (pay) after consuming computational resources from other participants. This inexistence of monetary incentives hinders the widespread adoption of desktop clouds as there is no motivation for the participants to join and remain in the desktop cloud environment. In this article, we propose a decentralized escrow approach over the ethereum blockchain for enhancing the expectation of a participating node to join and offer services in desktop cloud networks. We then propose a distributed multi-agent framework for desktop cloud environments. Moreover, we present the agents’ full algorithmic behavior with their interaction to the escrow over the ethereum smart contract. The proposed framework provides monetary incentives using blockchain-based cryptocurrencies managed through decentralized escrow over ethereum smart contract to the desktop cloud participants in a trusted manner. Lastly, we present simulation results from a testbed verifying the monetization of desktop cloud participants in the proposed framework.