CollabChain: Blockchain-backed trustless web-based volunteer computing platform

Abstract

Volunteer computing is a distributed computing model in which individuals in possession of computing resources volunteer to provide them to a project. Owing to the availability of billions of computing devices all over the world, volunteer computing can help solve problems that are larger in scale even for supercomputers. However, volunteer computing projects are difficult to launch and deploy. These platforms also force volunteers to trust the authenticity of the project owner and to blindly accept credits allotted to their contribution by the project owner. As a result, very few high-profile trusted projects are able to sustain in this system. In this paper, we present an incentivized web-based volunteer computing platform that functions as a market place to buy and sell computing power. Launching a project on the system and contributing to an existing project happens over the browser without the need for a specialized software or hardware. We introduce the application of blockchain to remove the need to trust any other party in the system. We also present a prototype implementation and solve NP-Problems as examples using the proposed prototype. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.