A Blockchain-Driven Reputation-Aware Relay Selection Framework for Trustworthy Peer-to-Peer Communication in Web3 Networks

Peer-to-peer (P2P) interaction forms a foundational layer of Web3 ecosystems, enabling participants to exchange data directly without depending on centralized brokers. In practical deployments, however, end-to-end reachability is often obstructed by network address translation, firewalls, and transient routing paths, which pushes architects toward the use of intermediate relay nodes. Unfortunately, relays that behave inconsistently or act maliciously can introduce a range of undesirable effects, including dropped packets, elevated latency, selective forwarding, and denial-of-service conditions. To mitigate these risks, this work presents a reputation-aware relay selection framework that lever-ages a blockchain substrate to govern trust. Every participant in the overlay is issued a cryptographic identity; the quality of service delivered by each relay is then tracked at runtime through metrics such as delivery ratio, round-trip delay, and transmission failure rate. A smart contract layer aggregates these observations into a dynamic reputation score that is recorded on an immutable ledger. When a communication session is being established, relays with higher reputation are preferred, while those exhibiting suspicious or degraded behavior are deprioritized or excluded. Experimental results indicate that, compared with conventional relay-selection strategies, the proposed approach delivers higher reliability, lower effective latency, and stronger resistance to malicious participation, making it a practical candidate for secure Web3 P2P communication.