Re: Voting protocol aha!

From: hal@finney.org
Date: Fri Nov 17 2000 - 11:02:04 MST


Eliezer writes:
> Hey, maybe that protocol would work for Ebay... the last three hours are
> Random Death time, producing a sustained frenzy of desperate bidding (each
> moment might be the last!) while giving the other bidders time to respond
> (probably!). If anyone turns this into a new e-commerce site, I get 0.5% of
> the stock. (If anyone tries to patent it, I'll have your guts for prior art.)

This has been discussed on eBay - some of the other auction sites do
this (I think Yahoo auctions). Sellers would generally prefer it, and
bidders who don't try to put in last-minute bids. But there are some
vocal bidders who rely on the technique who oppose changes.

The idea of a probabilistic cutoff is also interesting but probably
not practical for voting. It doesn't seem "fair", too unpredictable.
Randomness isn't a desirable quality in a voting protocol.

Something similar has been used a few times on the FX game, where there
were claims betting about FX parameters which might have been subject to
manipulation if the parameter was tested at a known time. So the claims
were set up to test the parameter at random times chosen over a period of
weeks, with the claim value being based on the average of these samples.

Hal



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