Data sharing techniques have progressively drawn increasing attention as a means of significantly reducing repetitive work. However, in the process of data sharing, the challenges regarding formation of mutual-trust relationships and increasing the level of user participation are yet to be solved. The existing solution is to use a third party as a trust organization for data sharing, but there is no dynamic incentive mechanism for data sharing with a large number of users. Blockchain 2.0 with smart contract has the natural advantage of being able to enable trust and automated transactions between a large number of users. This paper proposes a data sharing incentive model based on evolutionary game theory using blockchain with smart contract. The smart contract mechanism can dynamically control the excitation parameters and continuously encourages users to participate in data sharing.

Introduction

In the era of big data, digital resources have grown exponentially, and data has become an important strategic resource. At present, the big data industry faces a dilemma referred to as the problem of “data islands”. An effective solution to this problem would be to establish a reasonable and effective data sharing model [1]. Today, information disclosure and open sharing of data have become general trends in scientific, and even national, innovation. Numerous studies have shown that data sharing and reuse are conducive to accelerating the dissemination of data resources, by improving the efficiency and quality of work, and enhancing the potential for innovation [2–۵]. Although data sharing has varying applications, it provides significant convenience in daily life. However, in the process of data sharing, there are still three problems to be solved: unwillingness to share, fear of sharing, and inability to share [6]. The unwillingness of users to share data is affected by the formation of mutual-trust relationships and the economic utility of data sharing. However, little research has been conducted on data sharing in the big data era and with the support of blockchain technology. In this paper, we perform an evolutionary game equilibrium analysis of data sharing in the era of big data, and explore and analyze the evolutionary game process of data sharing. Finally, we obtain four constraints with which to design an adaptive smart contract mechanism that can be used to motivate more users to participate in data sharing.