MEDIATE: Mutually Endorsed Distributed Incentive Acknowledgment Token Exchange

Philipp Altmann, Katharina Winter, Michael Kölle, Maximilian Zorn, Claudia Linnhoff-Popien

Abstract: Recent advances in *multi-agent systems* (MAS) have shown that incorporating *peer incentivization* (PI) mechanisms vastly improves cooperation. Especially in social dilemmas, communication between the agents helps to overcome sub-optimal Nash equilibria. However, incentivization tokens need to be carefully selected. Furthermore, real-world applications might yield increased privacy requirements and limited exchange. Therefore, we extend the PI protocol for *mutual acknowledgment token exchange* (MATE) and provide additional analysis on the impact of the chosen tokens. Building upon those insights, we propose *mutually endorsed distributed incentive acknowledgment token exchange* (MEDIATE), an extended PI architecture employing automatic token derivation via decentralized consensus. Empirical results show the stable agreement on appropriate tokens yielding superior performance compared to static tokens and state-of-the-art approaches in different social dilemma environments with vari