Fostering Peer-to-Peer Blockchain-based Data Markets

The emergence of data markets will provide an arena for massive data trading. A largescale implementation and adoption of data markets can have significant economic and societal implications. Currently, however, two obstacles hinder the implementation and broader development of data markets—the lack of guarantees of data provenance and the lack of incentives for honest participation in the market. Using the Design Science Research approach, we develop a blockchain-based artifact that can help mitigate these two obstacles. The evaluation of the artifact demonstrates that blockchain technology could be instrumental in the design of new, decentralized incentive structures that motivate the honest participation of all the involved agents in a data market while establishing the provenance of the data.