How Can Incentive Mechanisms and Blockchain Benefit with Each Other? A Survey

In a blockchain-based system, the lack of centralized control requires active participation and cooperative behaviors of system entities to ensure system security and sustainability. However, dynamic environments and unpredictable entity behaviors challenge the performances of such systems in practice. Therefore, designing a feasible incentive mechanism to regulate entity behaviors becomes essential to improve blockchain system performance. The prosperous characteristics of blockchain can also contribute to an effective incentive mechanism. Unfortunately, current literature still lacks a thorough survey on incentive mechanisms related to the blockchain to understand how incentive mechanisms and blockchain make each other better. To this end, we propose evaluation requirements in terms of the properties and costs of incentive mechanisms. On the one hand, we provide a taxonomy of the incentive mechanisms of blockchain systems according to blockchain versions, incentive forms, and incentive goals. On the other hand, we categorize blockchain-based incentive mechanisms according to application scenarios and incentive goals. During the review, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of state-of-the-art incentive mechanisms based on the proposed evaluation requirements. Through careful review, we present how incentive mechanisms and blockchain benefit with each other, discover a number of unresolved issues, and point out corresponding potential directions for future research.