SwarmSearch: Decentralized Search Engine with Self-Funding Economy

Abstract

Centralized search engines control what we see, read, believe, and vote. Consequently, they raise concerns over information control, censorship, and bias. Decentralized search engines offer a remedy to this problem, but their adoption has been hindered by their inferior quality and lack of a self-sustaining economic framework. We present SwarmSearch, a fully decentralized, AI-powered search engine with a self-funding architecture. Our system is designed for deployment within the decentralized file-sharing software Tribler. SwarmSearch integrates volunteer-based with profit-driven mechanisms to foster an implicit marketplace for resources. Employing the state-of-the-art of AI-based retrieval and relevance ranking, we also aim to close the quality gap between decentralized search and centralized alternatives. Our system demonstrates high retrieval accuracy while showing robustness in the presence of 50% adversarial nodes.