A Truthful Mechanism Design for Distributed Optimisation Algorithms in Networks with Self-interested Agents
Systems and Control
2025-07-29 v1 Systems and Control
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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.20250,
title = {A Truthful Mechanism Design for Distributed Optimisation Algorithms in Networks with Self-interested Agents},
author = {Tianyi Zhong and David Angeli},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.20250},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
13 pages, 9 figures