Trust in Blockchain Cryptocurrency Ecosystem
Muhammad Habib ur Rehman, Khaled Salah, Ernesto Damiani, Davor Svetinović · IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management · 2019
The recent growth in blockchain-based cryptocurrency ecosystem has been attracting researchers, developers, investors, regulators, and speculators to develop new economic and business models for trade, investment, and taxation. Currently, the cryptocurrency ecosystem is immature with multifaceted trust issues at all levels from technology providers to users and governments. In this article, we present a detailed analysis of trust issues in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, including a detailed taxonomic discussion of the key trust aspects including price manipulation, price volatility, insider trading, parallel economy, shadow economy, reputation systems, transparency, centrality, token economy, governance, regulations, design, usability, privacy, and security. We also present a comparative analysis of the top 10 cryptocurrencies that are holding about 85% of the total market capital. Finally, we present a detailed summary of the key trust issues and their potential immediate, short-term, and long-term solutions. This article reveals that significant effort is required to develop a fully trustworthy cryptocurrency ecosystem.