Notes:
The network itself is not static. Rather its structure is changing, because the users are trying to increase their benefits. Since there is no central registry, everybody may create new nodes and delete his or her own nodes. Furthermore, users can determine trustworthy nodes and decide on the amount of trust they want to put into them. There are two interesting consequences:
Over the time, the network gets adapted to good information sources. First, only single interesting items will spread far through the network. When a source gets more attention, it may become a well connected hub.
As a second consequence, the network is resistant against spam. Since every node only receives information from trusted nodes, it will reduce the trust level or even delete the connexion to spam nodes completely. This mechanism will isolate single spam nodes and also whole clusters of self-trusting spam nodes.
The users establish ties, keep the trust values adjusted and rate individual items for their own selfish interests. Yet, their behaviours have far-reaching consequences for the whole community, because every change of a single trust value may affect the reputation of several nodes at the same time.