Outsourcing Computation: the Minimal Refereed Mechanism

10/31/2019

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by   Yuqing Kong, et al.

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We consider a setting where a verifier with limited computation power delegates a resource intensive computation task—which requires a T× S computation tableau—to two provers where the provers are rational in that each prover maximizes their own payoff—taking into account losses incurred by the cost of computation. We design a mechanism called the Minimal Refereed Mechanism (MRM) such that if the verifier has O(log S + log T) time and O(log S + log T) space computation power, then both provers will provide a honest result without the verifier putting any effort to verify the results. The amount of computation required for the provers (and thus the cost) is a multiplicative log S-factor more than the computation itself, making this schema efficient especially for low-space computations.