IACR News item: 19 March 2013
Mira Belenkiy, Melissa Chase, C. Chris Erway, John Jannotti, Alptekin Küpçü, Anna Lysyanskaya
ePrint ReportWe consider the scenario where there is a credit system whereby users can be rewarded for good work and fined for cheating. We show how to set rewards and fines that incentivize proper behavior from rational contractors, and mitigate the damage caused by malicious contractors. We analyze two strategies: random double-checking by the boss, and hiring multiple contractors to perform the same job.
We also present a bounty mechanism when multiple contractors are employed; the key insight is to give a reward to a contractor who catches another worker cheating. Furthermore, if we can assume that at least a small fraction h of the contractors are honest (1% − 10%), then we can provide graceful degradation for the accuracy of the system and the work the boss has to perform. This is much better than the Byzantine approach, which typically assumes h > 60%.
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