Policies in accountable contracts

Abstract

In this paper, accounting policies explicitly control resource usage within a contract architecture. Combined with a virtual resource economy, this allows efficient exchange of high-level computer services between untrustworthy participants. These services are specified as contracts, which must be signed by the participants to take effect. Each contract expresses its accounting policy using a limited language, with high expressiveness but predictable execution times. This is evaluated within a novel resource economy, in which physical resources, trust and money are treated homogeneously. A second-order trust model continually updates trustworthiness opinions, based on contract performance; trust delegation certificates support flexible, distributed extension of these trust relationships. The introspectible contracts, resource and trust models together provide accountability and resilience, which are particularly important for large-scale distributed computation initiatives such as the Grid. Thus participants can take calculated risks, based on expressed policies and trust, and rationally choose which contracts to perform.