Game theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theoryNow we learn and think about Bitcoin everyday, discussing mainly technology involved, its price and all sorts of news related. I’ve been studying Bitcoin in the last few years, too. I posted my opinions on bitcointalk to communicate with you.
Though my notion is relatively boring since it doesn’t belong to some interpretation of specific technical matter or news related to Bitcoin, and easily sparks conflict and controversy in that no standard answers ever exist, still I insist on writing it down because I put a high valuation on future. Things that Satoshi’s creating Bitcoin bring to us are definitely not limited to what we’ve seen today, it’ll refine human society where earth-shaking changes would occur consequently in the coming one to two decades.
In terms of the knowledge contained in Bitcoin, game theory is a prominent one (I’m sure many of you have already thought about it). It's not an exaggeration to say that the emergence of Bitcoin has much to do with game theory for the reason that the network of Bitcoin is dotted with knowledge from game theory. That deserves plenty attention in constructing cryptocurrency system: how to render participants of different roles in an economy to balance the interest in dynamic game and constantly enhance the flourishing of this economy.
The development of blockchain projects lies in the design of the mechanism behind, esp, economic regulation, such as the launch and deflation of tokens. And that actually rests with the knowledge system of game theory. I’m not a specialist in that theory, just to put forward these questions to trigger your radiant thinking over Bitcoin based on them.
So, what is game theory?
Game theory is a new embranchment of modern mathematics and an important subject of operations research, covering many ideas in economics. It revolves around the interaction among formulated incentive structures, mathematical theory and method of competition. It takes individual predicative behavior and actual behavior into consideration and explore their optimized strategy. It refers to the action of two or more people, by taking advantage of the strategy of the opposite party, to adjust their own tactics and finally win victory. Briefly, in an interactive game, while you’re choosing your own approach, you have to predict others’ decisions. Similarly, others’ are thinking over yours as well. It’s a multi-game process where everyone strives to maximize his own interest.
There are multitudes of classic cases and professional application situations in game theory, such as prisoner's dilemma and Nash equilibrium, you can learn more from the Internet. Then how is game theory applied to Bitcoin? For Bitcoin, the most typical case of game theory is Byzantine problem, which is used for the reference in making sure that things go smoothly when trust doesn’t exist among these participants in distributed network.
Byzantine problem, to be short, is about coordination. Byzantines attempt to conquer a city, they need to reach a consensus on the strategy adopted. However, renegades hidden in those commanders may deliver wrong orders, they spread false information to stop tasks from being correctly executed. Byzantine problem is about how to make all officers obey the same plan even though those people in different places don’t trust each other.
How did that problem exist and get settled in Bitcoin network? Bitcoin introduced the wisdom of game theory to its network, with ingenious economic incentives, it succeeded in harmonizing the interest of all participants. When it comes to miners who are safeguarding the healthy network, Bitcoin invented a kind of balance among them without the help of mutual trust by employing diversified tactics in the incentive mechanism. Provided that all miners accept the same strategy, then each of them can get the biggest reward. That guarantees the correct operation of network, decreases the final attack vectors and the possible motivation of attack.
Bitcoin is a distributed network with no centralized server, protected by miners. Miners’ verifying the effectiveness of transactions is crucial for the whole network to function normally. In the economic system of Bitcoin, miners are encouraged to do the right thing because on condition that they produce invalid blocks, their colleagues would simply ignore these blocks and continue to work in the parent chain. Hence, those who do evil things have no any profit at all, completely a waste of time, electricity and hashrate. To grab the maximum benefit, most of the miners would choose the stablest state. That maintains the steadiest status in network. Byzantine problem is obviously no threat to Bitcoin system.
Let’s have a look at the attack Bitcoin might encounter from the angle of game theory. If an evil group tends to attack Bitcoin network or temper with its date, the only way to realize that is collecting 51% hashing power, implying large amount of money is needed for the purchase of lots of mining device and sufficient electricity is required for the running of those devices. The cost is tremendously expensive.
If someone really has the wealth to do things above, I don’t think he’ll choose to do that in view of the fact that his success in attacking Bitcoin network would devalue Bitcoin instantly and gravely for the premise of the existence of Bitcoin is the temper-proof feature of data in blockchain. Otherwise, the value of Bitcoin would go zero directly, then the one who suffers biggest loss is absolutely hacker who spent great cost in attack.
At last, those attackers would figure out that adhering to the rules of this system is the best way to gain profit. That’s the function of game theory in Bitcoin.
Undoubtedly, the advantage game theory contains is far more than what I mentioned above, it is one of the core thought in Bitcoin, which is also widely applied to the design of economy system and management fabric of other blockchain projects. That’s why I’ve been emphasizing it. Bitcoin is not merely a kind of technology or currency. Something more valuable is the thought and philosophy behind Bitcoin, they lead us to forge ahead towards a new human civilization.