{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T02:42:47Z","timestamp":1760236967658,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":37,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,2,10]],"date-time":"2020-02-10T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1581292800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004895","name":"European Social Fund","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["MIS 5004883"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["MIS 5004883"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004895","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Computers"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Cloud computing offerings traditionally originate from a handful of large and well established providers, which monopolize the market, preventing small players and individuals from having a share. As a result, the few, blindly and perforce trusted entities define the prices and manage to gain a significant competitive advantage by exploiting the knowledge derived by users\u2019 data and computations. To tackle this monopoly and empower the democratization and full decentralization of the cloud computing market, we present CloudAgora, a platform that enables any potential resource provider, ranging from individuals to large companies, to monetize idle resources competing on equal terms, and allows any cloud consumer to enjoy access to low-cost storage and computation without having to trust any central authority. The key enabler of the platform is Blockchain technology, which is used to record commitment policies through the use of smart contracts, publicly verify off-chain services, both storage and computation related, and trigger automatic micropayments. On one hand, cloud consumers have the chance to request storage or compute resources, upload data, and outsource task processing over remote, fully distributed infrastructures. Although such infrastructures cannot be a priori trusted, CloudAgora offers mechanisms to ensure the verifiable validity of the outsourced storage and computation, discourage potential providers from behaving maliciously, and incentivize participants to play fair. On the other hand, providers are able to participate in auctions, placing bids for storage or computation tasks, serve requests, and offer validity proofs upon request. Our prototype is built as a Dapp on top of Ethereum and is available as an open source project.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/computers9010009","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,2,11]],"date-time":"2020-02-11T09:25:21Z","timestamp":1581413121000},"page":"9","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":9,"title":["Leveraging Blockchain Technology to Break the Cloud Computing Market Monopoly"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"9","author":[{"given":"Tasos","family":"Bakogiannis","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Computing Systems Laboratory, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Ioannis","family":"Mytilinis","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computing Systems Laboratory, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Katerina","family":"Doka","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computing Systems Laboratory, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Georgios","family":"Goumas","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computing Systems Laboratory, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,2,10]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). How Cloud Computing Is Changing the World \u2026 without You Knowing. Available online: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/media-network\/media-network-blog\/2013\/sep\/24\/cloud-computing-changing-world-healthcare."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). Cloud Computing: A Business Model Game Changer. Available online: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/media-network\/media-network-blog\/2012\/mar\/30\/cloud-computing-business-model."},{"key":"ref_3","first-page":"224","article-title":"Cloud computing","volume":"321","author":"Boss","year":"2007","journal-title":"IBM White Paper"},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). 451 Research. Available online: https:\/\/451research.com\/images\/Marketing\/press_releases\/Pre_Re-Invent_2018_press_release_final_11_22.pdf."},{"key":"ref_5","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2016\u20132021 White Paper. Available online: https:\/\/www.cisco.com\/c\/en\/us\/solutions\/collateral\/service-provider\/global-cloud-index-gci\/white-paper-c11-738085.html."},{"key":"ref_6","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). Report Linker, Cloud Computing Market by Service, Deployment Model, Organization Size, Workload, Vertical And Region\u2014Global Forecast to 2023. Available online: https:\/\/www.reportlinker.com\/p05749258\/Cloud-Computing-Market-by-Service-Deployment-Model-Organization-Size-Workload-Vertical-And-Region-Global-Forecast-to.html."},{"key":"ref_7","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). Canalys: Cloud Infrastructure Spend Grows 46% in Q4 2018 to Exceed US$80 Billion for Full Year. Available online: https:\/\/www.canalys.com\/static\/press_release\/2019\/pr20190204.pdf."},{"key":"ref_8","unstructured":"Wang, H., Jing, Q., Chen, R., He, B., Qian, Z., and Zhou, L. (2020, February 07). Distributed Systems Meet Economics: Pricing in the Cloud. Available online: https:\/\/www.usenix.org\/legacy\/event\/hotcloud10\/tech\/full_papers\/WangH.pdf."},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Nakamoto, S. (2020, February 07). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Available online: https:\/\/bitcoin.org\/bitcoin.pdf."},{"key":"ref_10","unstructured":"Swan, M. (2015). Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy, O\u2019Reilly Media, Inc."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Croman, K., Decker, C., Eyal, I., Gencer, A.E., Juels, A., Kosba, A., Miller, A., Saxena, P., Shi, E., and Sirer, G. (2016). On scaling decentralized blockchains. International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-662-53357-4_8"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Eberhardt, J., and Tai, S. (2017). On or off the blockchain? Insights on off-chaining computation and data. European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-67262-5_1"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Doka, K., Bakogiannis, T., Mytilinis, I., and Goumas, G. (2019). CloudAgora: Democratizing the Cloud. International Conference on Blockchain, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-23404-1_10"},{"key":"ref_14","unstructured":"Wilkinson, S., Boshevski, T., Brandoff, J., and Buterin, V. (2020, February 07). Storj a Peer-to-Peer Cloud Storage Network. Available online: https:\/\/storj.io\/storj2014.pdf."},{"key":"ref_15","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). A Robust Foundation for Humanity\u2019s Information. Available online: https:\/\/filecoin.io\/."},{"key":"ref_16","unstructured":"Vorick, D., and Champine, L. (2020, February 07). Sia: Simple Decentralized Storage. Available online: https:\/\/sia.tech\/sia.pdf."},{"key":"ref_17","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). Available online: https:\/\/golem.network\/."},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"Zyskind, G., Nathan, O., and Pentland, A. (2015). Enigma: Decentralized computation platform with guaranteed privacy. arXiv."},{"key":"ref_19","unstructured":"Merkle, R.C. (1987, January 16\u201320). A Digital Signature Based on a Conventional Encryption Function. Proceedings of the Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, Heidelberg, Germany."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Luu, L., Teutsch, J., Kulkarni, R., and Saxena, P. (2015, January 12\u201316). Demystifying incentives in the consensus computer. Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Denver, CO, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/2810103.2813659"},{"key":"ref_21","unstructured":"Teutsch, J., and Reitwie\u00dfner, C. (2020, February 07). A Scalable Verification Solution for Blockchains. Available online: https:\/\/people.cs.uchicago.edu\/~teutsch\/papers\/truebit.pdf."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ben-Sasson, E., Chiesa, A., Genkin, D., Tromer, E., and Virza, M. (2013, January 18\u201322). SNARKs for C: Verifying program executions succinctly and in zero knowledge. Proceedings of the Annual Cryptology Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-40084-1_6"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Parno, B., Howell, J., Gentry, C., and Raykova, M. (2013, January 19\u201322). Pinocchio: Nearly practical verifiable computation. Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy,  Berkeley, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/SP.2013.47"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"300","DOI":"10.1137\/0108018","article-title":"Polynomial Codes Over Certain Finite Fields","volume":"8","author":"Reed","year":"1960","journal-title":"J. Soc. Ind. Appl. Math."},{"key":"ref_25","unstructured":"Bano, S., Sonnino, A., Al-Bassam, M., Azouvi, S., McCorry, P., Meiklejohn, S., and Danezis, G. (2019, January 21\u201323). SoK: Consensus in the age of blockchains. Proceedings of the 1st ACM Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies, Zurich, Switzerland."},{"key":"ref_26","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). Ethereum 2.0 Specifications. Available online: https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/eth2.0-specs."},{"key":"ref_27","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). Solidity, the Contract-Oriented Programming Language. Available online: https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/solidity."},{"key":"ref_28","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). koa, next generation web framework for node.js. Available online: https:\/\/koajs.com\/."},{"key":"ref_29","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). Angular, One framework, Mobile & Desktop. Available online: https:\/\/angular.io\/."},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Dinh, T.T.A., Wang, J., Chen, G., Liu, R., Ooi, B.C., and Tan, K.L. (2017, January 14\u201319). Blockbench: A framework for analyzing private blockchains. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Conference on Management of Data, Chicago, IL, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/3035918.3064033"},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Westerlund, M., and Kratzke, N. (2018, January 16\u201320). Towards Distributed Clouds: A Review About the Evolution of Centralized Cloud Computing, Distributed Ledger Technologies, and A Foresight on Unifying Opportunities and Security Implications. Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on High Performance Computing &mp; Simulation (HPCS), Orleans, France.","DOI":"10.1109\/HPCS.2018.00108"},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Maymounkov, P., and Mazieres, D. (2002). Kademlia: A peer-to-peer information system based on the xor metric. International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/3-540-45748-8_5"},{"key":"ref_33","unstructured":"Ben-Sasson, E., Chiesa, A., Tromer, E., and Virza, M. (2020, February 07). Succinct Non-Interactive Zero Knowledge for a von Neumann Architecture. Available online: https:\/\/www.usenix.org\/conference\/usenixsecurity14\/technical-sessions\/presentation\/ben-sasson."},{"key":"ref_34","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). GridCoin White Paper. Available online: https:\/\/www.gridcoin.us\/assets\/img\/whitepaper.pdf."},{"key":"ref_35","unstructured":"Goldreich, O. (1996, January 22\u201324). Secure multi-party computation. Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, Philadelphia, PA, USA."},{"key":"ref_36","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). dfinity: The Internet Computer. Available online: https:\/\/dfinity.org\/."},{"key":"ref_37","unstructured":"(2020, February 07). iExec Blockchain-Based Decentralized Cloud Computing. Available online: https:\/\/iex.ec\/."}],"container-title":["Computers"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2073-431X\/9\/1\/9\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T08:56:32Z","timestamp":1760172992000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2073-431X\/9\/1\/9"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2020,2,10]]},"references-count":37,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,3]]}},"alternative-id":["computers9010009"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/computers9010009","relation":{},"ISSN":["2073-431X"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"2073-431X"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2020,2,10]]}}}