A Reference Architecture for Blockchain-Based Crowdsourcing Platforms

Companies increasingly tender knowledge-intensive tasks using crowdsourcing platforms to gain access to scarce knowledge and skills otherwise out of reach, and in this way, gaining competitive advantage. Despite its potential, existing crowdsourcing platforms encounter several challenges, including (1) fragmentation of expertise, as there are many platforms, (2) distrust between task providers and crowdsourcing participants, as identity and past performance are often not known, and (3) inability to learn from experience due to a lack of openness. A reference architecture for blockchain-based knowledge-intensive crowdsourcing platforms to mediate transactions between demand and supply of knowledge is designed in this paper to overcome these challenges. A design science research method is followed to develop the architecture. The reference architecture shows how blockchain and smart contract components can be integrated to support and coordinate knowledge-intensive crowdsourcing activities. By removing traditional e-commerce intermediaries, blockchain reduces search friction, knowledge transfer costs, and cheating by task providers or crowdsourcing participants.