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Co-utility: Designing Self-enforcing and Mutually Beneficial Protocols

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Co-utility

Part of the book series: Studies in Systems, Decision and Control ((SSDC,volume 110))

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Abstract

Protocols govern the interactions between agents, both in the information society and in the society at large. Protocols based on mutually beneficial cooperation are especially interesting because they improve the societal welfare and no central authority is needed to enforce them (which eliminates a single point of failure and possible bottlenecks). In order to guide the design of such protocols, we introduce co-utility as a framework for cooperation between rational agents such that the best strategy for each agent is to help another agent achieve her best outcome. Specifically, in this chapter we study and characterize self-enforcing protocols in game-theoretic terms. Then, we use this characterization to develop the concept of co-utile protocol and study under which circumstances co-utility arises.

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Acknowledgements

Funding by the Templeton World Charity Foundation (grant TWCF0095/AB60 “CO-UTILITY”) is gratefully acknowledged. Also, partial support to this work has been received from the Government of Catalonia (ICREA Acadèmia Prize to J. Domingo-Ferrer and grant 2014 SGR 537), the Spanish Government (projects TIN2014-57364-C2-1-R “SmartGlacis”, TIN2015-70054-REDC and TIN2016-80250-R “Sec-MCloud”) and the European Commission (projects H2020-644024 “CLARUS” and H2020-700540 “CANVAS”). The authors are with the UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy, but the views in this work are the authors’ own and are not necessarily shared by UNESCO or any of the funding bodies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy, Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Av. Països Catalans 26, 43007, Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain

    Josep Domingo-Ferrer, David Sánchez & Jordi Soria-Comas

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  1. Josep Domingo-Ferrer
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  2. David Sánchez
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  3. Jordi Soria-Comas
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Correspondence to Josep Domingo-Ferrer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy, Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain

    Josep Domingo-Ferrer

  2. UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy, Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain

    David Sánchez

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Domingo-Ferrer, J., Sánchez, D., Soria-Comas, J. (2018). Co-utility: Designing Self-enforcing and Mutually Beneficial Protocols. In: Domingo-Ferrer, J., Sánchez, D. (eds) Co-utility. Studies in Systems, Decision and Control, vol 110. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60234-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60234-9_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-60233-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-60234-9

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