Exploring the Feasibility of Proactive Reputations
Gayatri Swamynathan, Ben Y. Zhao and Kevin C. Almeroth

Reputation mechanisms help peers in a peer-to-peer (P2P) system
avoid unreliable or malicious peers. In application-level networks,
however, short peer lifetimes mean reputations are often generated
from a small number of past transactions. These reputation values 
are less "reliable", and more vulnerable to badmouthing or
collusion attacks. We address this issue by introducing proactive
reputations, a first-hand history of transactions initiated to augment
incomplete or short-term reputation values. We present several
mechanisms for generating proactive reputations, along with a 
statistical similarity metric to measure their effectiveness.