TrustLend: Using Borrower Trustworthiness for Lending on Ethereum

The practice of personal lending, also known as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending, has been increasing globally. However, providing unsecured loans to peers without requiring collateral remains a challenge. We present a platform called TrustLend, which enables using borrower trustworthiness as an alternative to collateral in personal lending transactions. TrustLend is a blockchain-based platform implemented on Ethereum. We introduce a borrower trustworthiness score with variable selection rules to help lenders decide on reliable candidates as borrowers. We describe the prototype implementation, which is a Decentralized Application (DApp) that uses smart contracts. The prototype demonstrates fundamental features and supports borrowers, recommenders, and lenders/investors in establishing loans and approvals. Finally, the prototype shows how end-users can easily access loans with minimum collateral without hidden costs and swift transactions.