Crowdbc: a blockchain-based decentralized framework for crowdsourcing
Abstract
Crowdsourcing systems which utilize the human intelligence to solve complex tasks have gained considerable interest and adoption in recent years. However, the majority of existing crowdsourcing systems rely on central servers, which are subject to the weaknesses of traditional trust-based model, such as single point of failure. They are also vulnerable to distributed denial of service (DDoS) and Sybil attacks due to malicious users involvement. In addition, high service fees from the crowdsourcing platform may hinder the development of crowdsourcing. How to address these potential issues has both research and substantial value. In this paper, we conceptualize a blockchain-based decentralized framework for crowdsourcing named CrowdBC, in which a requester's task can be solved by a crowd of workers without relying on any third trusted institution, users' privacy can be guaranteed and only low transaction fees are required. In particular, we introduce the architecture of our proposed framework, based on which we give a concrete scheme. We further implement a software prototype on Ethereum public test network with real-world dataset. Experiment results show the feasibility, usability, and scalability of our proposed crowdsourcing system.
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Blockchain, a revolutionary decentralized model, can be adapted not only to remove the limitations of the conventional crowdsourcing schemes but also to usher technological advancements including decentralization and transparency.
“Blockchain, a revolutionary decentralized model, can be adapted not only to remove the limitations of the conventional crowdsourcing schemes but also to usher technological advancements including decentralization and transparency [193,195].”
From A survey on the adoption of blockchain in IoT: challenges and solutions (2021) · cites this paper as [195]
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- Authors
- Li, M., Weng, J., Yang, A., Lu, W., Zhang, Y., Hou, L., Liu, J.-N., Xiang, Y., & Deng, R. H.
- Affiliations
- Jinan University (CN)
- Sun Yat-sen University (CN)
- Swinburne University of Technology (AU)
- Singapore Management University (SG)
- Venue
- IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
- Published
- 2019-06-01
- Volume
- 30
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1251-1266
- ISSN
- 1045-9219 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-2183
- 2161-9883
- OpenAlex
- W2724474800
- Cited by
- 522
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 37 · 2024: 60 · 2023: 68 · 2022: 92 · 2021: 88 · 2020: 84 · 2019: 66 · 2018: 10
- FWCI
- 100.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (publishedVersion)
- Swinburne figshare (Swinburne University of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Key R&D Plan of China (2017YFB0802203, 2018YFB1003701)
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (61825203, U1736203, 61702222, 61472165, 61732021, 61877029, 61872153, 61802145, U1636209)
- National Joint Engineering Research Center of Network Security Detection and Protection Technology
- Guangdong Provincial Special Funds for Applied Technology Research and Development and Transformation of Important Scientific and Technological Achieve (2016B010124009, 2017B010124002)
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Data Security and Privacy Preserving (2017B030301004)
- Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Data Security and Privacy Preserving (201705030004)
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017M612842)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Mobile Crowdsensing and Crowdsourcing
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Blockchain Technology in Education and Learning
- Keywords
- crowdsourcing, blockchain, decentralization (distributed systems), Ethereum, Sybil attack, DDoS attacks, trust model, user privacy, transaction fees, scalability
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