Alberto Sonnino, Michał Król, Argyrios Tasiopoulos and Ioannis Psaras
Recent developments in blockchains and edge computing allow deployment of decentralized shared economy platforms with utility token support, where tokens (in the form of altcoins) secure and reward useful work. However, the majority of the systems being developed, does not provide mechanisms to pair those who offer services (workers) and those who request them (clients), or rely on manual and insecure resolution. AStERISK bridges this gap allowing to perform sealed-bid auctions on blockchains, automatically determine the most optimal price for services, and assign clients to the most suitable workers. AStERISK allows workers to specify a minimal price for their work, and hide submitted bids as well the identity of the bidders without relying on any centralized party at any point. We provide a smart contract implementation of AStERISK and show how to deploy it within the Filecoin network, and perform an initial benchmark on Chainspace, an efficient, new smart contract platform.