NeTS: Small: Incentivizing Internet-Scale Web Mining with Webcoin

NeTS：小型：利用 Webcoin 激励互联网规模的网络挖矿

• 批准号: 1810582
• 负责人: Aleksandar Kuzmanovic
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1810582&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NeTS; Small; Incentivizing; Internet; Scale

Four major search engines hold a unique position in enabling the use of the Internet, as they alone direct over 98% of Internet users to the content they seek, using proprietary indices. While the contribution of these companies is undeniable, their design is necessarily affected by their economic interests, which may or may not align with those of the users, raising concerns regarding their effect on the availability of information around the globe. One of the key barriers that hinders the proliferation of a larger number of search engines is the daunting, multi-billion-dollar-worth task of crawling and indexing the exabyte-scale Web space. Hence, this task is carried out by a small number of players capable of committing substantial resources to conduct 24/7 Web crawling and indexing. Despite prior efforts to democratize this space, i.e., promote the use of a distributed, objective and unbiased index instead, the use of such distributed systems has not become common. This is mostly due to inferior results associated with small Web indices used by such systems, induced by the lack of economic incentives for participation in distributed Web crawling, or because of the small-scale nature of the communities of users interested in collaborative Web indexing. This project seeks to show that generating incentives to create an up-to-date, organically-generated Web index, widely available to the "masses," is the way to democratize the search engine space. To generate sustainable incentives for user participation, this project utilizes Bitcoin's principles, yet forces miners to crawl and index the Web instead of conducting purposeless computations, as in Bitcoin. This project features Webcoin, a novel distributed digital currency which crowdsources networking tasks and rewards users for conducting Web crawling, scraping, and indexing, while providing the same security guarantees as Bitcoin. Webcoin's novelty, focus, and unique contribution lies in being the first to incentivize networking tasks, rather than computational tasks or personal content, to produce Google-scale Web indices within days. The key goal of this project is to design, implement, and evaluate Webcoin. This project has the potential to make a significant impact by removing the key barrier that hinders the proliferation of novel search engines, empowering the people to create such systems without significant initial costs. If successful, the proposed system will enable bias-free search, thus enhancing human liberties and promoting a free and open society. The PI plans to design and disseminate Webcoin as open-source software. Moreover, Webcoin's design principles could prove useful in domains beyond networking, in incentivizing user participation and in verifying user contributions, at scale. Education is an integral part of the project, and the PI plans to leverage existing institutional and special programs to recruit students from underrepresented groups into the project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

四个主要的搜索引擎在实现Internet的使用方面拥有独特的位置，因为它们仅将超过98％的互联网用户带到了他们所寻求的内容，并使用专有索引。尽管这些公司的贡献是不可否认的，但它们的设计必然受其经济利益的影响，而经济利益可能与用户可能不符，这引起了人们对它们对全球信息可用性的影响的担忧。阻碍大量搜索引擎扩散的关键障碍之一是爬行和索引Exabyte级的网络空间的艰巨而数十亿美元的价值任务。因此，这项任务是由少数能够投入大量资源进行24/7网络爬行和索引的玩家执行的。尽管先前努力使这个空间民主化，即促进使用分布式，客观和公正的索引，但使用这种分布式系统并不普遍。这主要是由于与此类系统使用的小型网络指数相关的劣等结果，这是由于缺乏参与分布式网络爬行的经济激励措施引起的，或者是由于对协作网络索引感兴趣的用户社区的小规模性质。该项目试图表明，产生激励措施来创建最新的有机生成的网络指数，可为“群众”广泛使用，这是使搜索引擎空间民主化的方式。为了为用户参与产生可持续的激励措施，该项目利用比特币的原理，但迫使矿工像比特币一样爬行和索引网络而不是进行无目的的计算。该项目以WebCoin为特色，这是一种新颖的分布式数字货币，它挤满了网络任务，并奖励用户进行网络爬网，刮擦和索引，同时提供与比特币相同的安全保证。 Webcoin的新颖性，重点和独特的贡献在于第一个激励网络任务而不是计算任务或个人内容，以在几天之内生成Google规模的Web指数。该项目的关键目标是设计，实施和评估网络币。该项目有可能通过消除阻碍新型搜索引擎扩散的关键障碍来产生重大影响，从而使人们能够创建此类系统而无需大量初始成本。如果成功的话，拟议的系统将实现无偏见的搜索，从而增强人类自由并促进自由和开放的社会。 PI计划将WebCoin设计和传播为开源软件。此外，WebCoin的设计原理可以证明在网络之外的域，激励用户参与和验证用户贡献的范围，从而大规模验证用户。教育是该项目不可或缺的一部分，PI计划利用现有的机构和特殊计划来招募来自代表性不足的群体的学生进入该项目。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的审查标准通过评估来进行评估的。