Charging in Peer-to-Peer Systems Based on a Token Accounting System

Today, Peer-to-Peer applications are predominant on the internet when considered in terms of its traffic consumption. However apart from Skype, their commercial success is still very limited. This is due to the difficulties faced when trying to implement crucial functionality such as accounting and charging without violating the Peer-to-Peer paradigm. A fully decentralized accounting scheme based on tokens was presented by the authors last year. In this paper we analyse the interactions between token-based accounting and charging in order to enable peers to charge for their services. We present three different charging schemes using tokens as (1) pure receipts, as (2) Micropayment, and as (3) bill of exchange. These schemes are evaluated based on the provided security and the overhead traffic introduced into a Peer-to-Peer system.