VeriBlock: A Blockchain-Based Verifiable Trust Management Architecture with Provable Interactions

There has been considerable advancement in the use of blockchain for trust management in large-scale dynamic systems. In such systems, blockchain is mainly used to store the trust score or trust-related information of interactions among the various entities. However, present trust management architectures using blockchain lack verifiable interactions among the entities on which the trust score is calculated. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based trust management framework that allows independent trust providers to implement different trust metrics on a common set of trust evidence and provide individual trust value. We employ geo-location as proof of interaction. Some of the existing proposals rely upon geo-location data, but they do not support trust calculation by multiple trust providers. Instead, they can only support a centralised system. Our proposed architecture does not depend upon a single centralised third-party entity to ensure trusted interactions. Our architecture is supported by provable interactions that can easily be verified using blockchain. Therefore, it allows a high degree of confidence in trust management by ensuring the actual interactions between the entities. We provide a detailed design and development of the architecture using real-world use case examples. The proof of prototype was implemented on the Ethereum blockchain platform. Experimental results demonstrate that the employment of independent trust providers adequately provides a high degree of trust scores and that the proposed architecture can be used in a real-world environment.