Token Exchange System as incentive mechanism for e-Science Grid

E-Science has a large demand for Grid resources. Research institutes of physics are interested in sharing their computational resources. Currently, Grid resources are not shared between the institutes over a billing system. It is based on an oral agreement. A high communication overhead at a political level is required to start and maintain cooperation. In this paper we propose a mechanism called Token exchange system (TES). Our aim is to facilitate exchange of resources among the different research institutes without any face-to-face agreement. Furthermore, the mechanism has to set the right incentives so that members will share their resources fairly and free-riders are avoided. This approach is the combination of reputation mechanism and the payment mechanism in one coherent system. Since the e-Science community abhors real money as an exchange mechanism, this approach provides a solution to set incentives like payment mechanisms and to implement the advantages of reputation mechanisms.