TY - GEN
T1 - Mechanisms for outsourcing computation via a decentralized market
AU - Eisele, Scott
AU - Eghtesad, Taha
AU - Troutman, Nicholas
AU - Laszka, Aron
AU - Dubey, Abhishek
N1 - Funding Information:
An open market of computational resources, where resource owners and resource users trade directly with each other has the potential for greater participation than volunteer computing and more competitive pricing than cloud computing. The key challenges associated with implementing such a market stem from the fact that any agent can participate and behave maliciously. Thus, mechanisms for detecting misbehavior and for efficiently resolving disputes are required. In this paper we propose a smart contract-based solution to enable such a market. Our design deters participants from misbehaving by resolving disputes via dedicated Mediators and by imposing enforceable fines through the smart contract. This is possible because we recognized that the results do not need to be globally accepted, convincing the JC will often suffice. We learned that due to the limitations of Ethereum our platform is only suitable for long running tasks, but there is space between the cost of electricity and AWS for a platform of this nature. Future work is looking into other platforms that support smart contracts, as well as leveraging improvements to Ethereum.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 ACM.
PY - 2020/7/13
Y1 - 2020/7/13
N2 - As the number of personal computing and IoT devices grows rapidly, so does the amount of computational power that is available at the edge. Many of these devices are often idle and constitute an untapped resource which could be used for outsourcing computation. Existing solutions for harnessing this power, such as volunteer computing (e.g., BOINC), are centralized platforms in which a single organization or company can control participation and pricing. By contrast, an open market of computational resources, where resource owners and resource users trade directly with each other, could lead to greater participation and more competitive pricing. To provide an open market, we introduce MODiCuM, a decentralized system for outsourcing computation. MODiCuM deters participants from misbehaving - -which is a key problem in decentralized systems - -by resolving disputes via dedicated mediators and by imposing enforceable fines. However, unlike other decentralized outsourcing solutions, MODiCuM minimizes computational overhead since it does not require global trust in mediation results. We provide analytical results proving that MODiCuM can deter misbehavior, and we evaluate the overhead of MODiCuM using experimental results based on an implementation of our platform.
AB - As the number of personal computing and IoT devices grows rapidly, so does the amount of computational power that is available at the edge. Many of these devices are often idle and constitute an untapped resource which could be used for outsourcing computation. Existing solutions for harnessing this power, such as volunteer computing (e.g., BOINC), are centralized platforms in which a single organization or company can control participation and pricing. By contrast, an open market of computational resources, where resource owners and resource users trade directly with each other, could lead to greater participation and more competitive pricing. To provide an open market, we introduce MODiCuM, a decentralized system for outsourcing computation. MODiCuM deters participants from misbehaving - -which is a key problem in decentralized systems - -by resolving disputes via dedicated mediators and by imposing enforceable fines. However, unlike other decentralized outsourcing solutions, MODiCuM minimizes computational overhead since it does not require global trust in mediation results. We provide analytical results proving that MODiCuM can deter misbehavior, and we evaluate the overhead of MODiCuM using experimental results based on an implementation of our platform.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089286308&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85089286308&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3401025.3401737
DO - 10.1145/3401025.3401737
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85089286308
T3 - DEBS 2020 - Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-Based Systems
SP - 61
EP - 72
BT - DEBS 2020 - Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-Based Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 14th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-Based Systems, DEBS 2020
Y2 - 13 July 2020 through 17 July 2020
ER -