A Truthful Mechanism Design for Distributed Optimisation Algorithms in Networks with Self-interested Agents

TL;DR

This paper introduces a truthful mechanism for distributed optimization in networks with self-interested agents, ensuring honest participation and compatibility with various algorithms, thereby enhancing system resilience.

Contribution

The work develops a novel truthful mechanism that incentivizes honest behavior in distributed optimization with strategic agents, applicable to any subgradient-based algorithm.

Findings

The mechanism incentivizes agents to participate honestly.

It is compatible with any subgradient-based distributed optimization algorithm.

An illustrative example demonstrates the mechanism's effectiveness.

Abstract

Enhancing resilience in multi-agent systems in the face of selfish agents is an important problem that requires further characterisation. This work develops a truthful mechanism that avoids self-interested and strategic agents maliciously manipulating the algorithm. We prove theoretically that the proposed mechanism incentivises self-interested agents to participate and follow the provided algorithm faithfully. Additionally, the mechanism is compatible with any distributed optimisation algorithm that can calculate at least one subgradient at a given point. Finally, we present an illustrative example that shows the effectiveness of the mechanism.