Trust Trust Me (The Additivity)

Abstract : We present a mathematical formulation of a trust metric using a quality and quantity pair. Under a certain assumption, we regard trust as an additive value and define the soundness of a trust computation as not to exceed the total sum. Moreover, we point out the importance of not only soundness of each computed trust but also the stability of the trust computation procedure against changes in trust value assignment. In this setting, we define trust composition operators. We also propose a trust computation protocol and prove its soundness and stability using the operators.