Designing trust-enabling blockchain systems for the inter-organizational exchange of capacity

Virtual capacity-exchange platforms are hindered by behavioral uncertainty and a lack of inter-organizational trust among anonymous participants.

Transaction cost economics and agency theory as kernel theories; trust theory (Riegelsberger et al.); mechanisms of signaling, screening, reputation and authority; blockchain.

Design science research over two design iterations: meta-requirements from literature and interviews, instantiation in an artifact, and experimental evaluation of perceived trust.

Blockchain, trust, capacity exchange, design principle, experiment, design science.

A blockchain-based capacity-exchange platform instantiating six trust-enabling design principles. Solution-space representation: Instantiation (prototype) plus experimentally validated design principles (design theory).

19 meta-requirements (Fig. 3), six design principles for establishing inter-organizational trust (tender signaling, identity signaling, authority and fairness, incentives, screening, reputation), 45 figure-explicit MR-to-cooperation-design connectors represented as 53 MR-to-DP edges after expanding the shared DP1/DP2 Signaling target, and 14 design features realizing the principles in a Solidity-based instantiation (Fig. 6).