Title: Opportunity-Cost-Driven Reward Mechanisms for Crowd-Sourced Computing Platforms Show Chinese title

Title: 基于机会成本的奖励机制用于众包计算平台

Abstract: This paper introduces a game-theoretic model tailored for reward distribution on crowd-sourced computing platforms. It explores a repeated game framework where miners, as computation providers, decide their computation power contribution in each round, guided by the platform's designed reward distribution mechanism. The reward for each miner in every round is based on the platform's randomized task payments and the miners' computation transcripts. Specifically, it defines Opportunity-Cost-Driven Incentive Compatibility (OCD-IC) and Dynamic OCD-IC (DOCD-IC) for scenarios where strategic miners might allocate some computation power to more profitable activities, such as Bitcoin mining. The platform must also achieve Budget Balance (BB), aiming for a non-negative total income over the long term. This paper demonstrates that traditional Pay-Per-Share (PPS) reward schemes require assumptions about task demand and miners' opportunity costs to ensure OCD-IC and BB, yet they fail to satisfy DOCD-IC. The paper then introduces Pay-Per-Share with Subsidy (PPSS), a new reward mechanism that allows the platform to provide subsidies to miners, thus eliminating the need for assumptions on opportunity cost to achieve OCD-IC, DOCD-IC, and long-term BB. Show Chinese abstract

Abstract: 本文介绍了一种针对众包计算平台上的奖励分配的游戏理论模型。 它探讨了一个重复博弈框架，在该框架中，矿工作为计算资源提供者，在每一回合中根据平台设计的奖励分配机制决定其计算能力的贡献。 每一回合中每个矿工的奖励基于平台的随机任务支付和矿工的计算记录。 具体而言，它定义了机会成本驱动的激励兼容性（OCD-IC）和动态OCD-IC（DOCD-IC），用于处理策略性矿工可能将部分计算能力分配到更具盈利能力的活动（如比特币挖矿）的情况。 平台还必须实现预算平衡（BB），旨在长期实现总收入为非负。 本文证明了传统的按份额支付（PPS）奖励方案需要对任务需求和矿工的机会成本做出假设，以确保OCD-IC和BB，但它们无法满足DOCD-IC。 随后，本文引入了带有补贴的按份额支付（PPSS）奖励机制，这是一种新的奖励机制，允许平台向矿工提供补贴，从而消除对机会成本假设的需求，以实现OCD-IC、DOCD-IC和长期预算平衡。