Slow Games

D Reusche, Christopher Goes, Nicolas Della Penna

Keywords: mechanism design, distributed systems, principal-agent problem, lossy compression

TL;DR: We look at a class of principal-agent problems where speed differences between principal and agent introduce uncertainty on the side of the principal and analyze the influence of this uncertainty on policy design and enforcement.

Abstract: Motivated by decentralized permissionless protocols that are ultimately backed by social consensus, which can only perceive and act much slower than the service provisioning, we study what we term a Slow Game; a type of principal-agent problem, in which the agent acts as operator of a service and the principal as a regulator, which sets and attempts to enforce policies about the service being provided. The regulator is slower acting and measuring than the operator, which introduces uncertainty depending on the difference in speed. In this publication we introduce a framework inspired by lossy compression problems to model this type of game, as well as present results from simulations of a minimal example.

Submission Number: 21