Abstract

In recent years, the gamification research community has widely and frequently questioned the effectiveness of one-size-fits-all gamification schemes. In consequence, personalization seems to be an important part of any successful gamification design. Personalization can be improved by understanding user behavior and Hexad player/user type. This paper comes with an original research idea: It investigates whether users’ game-related data (collected via various gamer-archetype surveys) can be used to predict their behavioral characteristics and Hexad user types in non-game (but gamified) contexts. The affinity that exists between the concepts of gamification and gaming provided us with the impetus for running this exploratory research. We conducted an initial survey study with 67 Stack Exchange users (as a case study). We discovered that users’ gameplay information could reveal valuable and helpful information about their behavioral characteristics and Hexad user types in a non-gaming (but gamified) environment. The results of testing three gamer archetypes (i.e., Bartle , Big Five, and BrainHex ) show that they can all help predict users’ most dominant Stack Exchange behavioral characteristics and Hexad user type better than a random labeler’s baseline. That said, of all the gamer archetypes analyzed in this paper, BrainHex performs the best. In the end, we introduce a research agenda for future work. Keywords: Game · Gamification · archetypes · Bartle · Big Five · BrainHex · Prediction · User behavior · CQA · Hexad.

Abstract

To implement a blockchain, we need a blockchain protocol for all the nodes to follow. To design a blockchain protocol, we need a block publisher selection mechanism and a chain selection rule. In Proof-of-Stake (PoS) based blockchain protocols, block publisher selection mechanism selects the node to publish the next block based on the relative stake held by the node. However, PoS protocols may face vulnerability to fully adaptive corruptions. In literature, researchers address this issue at the cost of performance. In this paper, we propose a novel PoS-based blockchain protocol, QuickSync, to achieve security against fully adaptive corruptions without compromising on performance. We propose a metric called block power, a value defined for each block, derived from the output of the verifiable random function based on the digital signature of the block publisher. With this metric, we compute chain power, the sum of block powers of all the blocks comprising the chain, for all the valid chains. These metrics are a function of the block publisher's stake to enable the PoS aspect of the protocol. The chain selection rule selects the chain with the highest chain power as the one to extend. This chain selection rule hence determines the selected block publisher of the previous block. When we use metrics to define the chain selection rule, it may lead to vulnerabilities against Sybil attacks. QuickSync uses a Sybil attack resistant function implemented using histogram matching. We prove that QuickSync satisfies common prefix, chain growth, and chain quality properties and hence it is secure. We also show that it is resilient to different types of adversarial …

Abstract

Electricity markets are getting more dynamic and complex today. On the one hand, there are outside-in factors like new entrants and increasing competition, regulatory mandates, and volatility of the electricity prices. In contrast, on the other hand, there are inside-out factors like the adoption of renewable energies, storages, and EV, emphasis on the generation and retail portfolio optimization together with creating affinity services around the empowered consumers. The paper will start with the introduction of this dynamic environment across the globe with a specific focus on Australia, the UK, and US electricity markets. Introduction of 5 min settlement in Australian Electricity Market, the rise of ancillary service products in the UK, or new roles like Community Choice Aggregators (CCA) in the US are some of the

Abstract

Advances in mobile computing have paved the way for new types of distributed applications that can be executed solely by mobile devices on Device-to-Device (D2D) ecosystems (e.g., crowdsensing). Sophisticated applications, like cryptocurrencies, need distributed ledgers (DLs) to function. DLs, such as blockchains and directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), employ consensus protocols to add data in the form of blocks. However, such protocols are designed for resourceful devices that are interconnected via the Internet. Moreover, existing DLs are not deployable to D2D ecosystems since their storage needs are continuously increasing. In this work, we introduce and analyze Mneme, a DAG-based DL that can be maintained solely by mobile devices. Mneme utilizes two novel consensus protocols: 1) Proof of Context (PoC) and 2) Proof of Equivalence (PoE). PoC employs users’ context to add data on Mneme. PoE is executed periodically to summarize data and produce equivalent blocks that require less storage. We analyze Mneme’s security and justify the ability of PoC and PoE to guarantee the characteristics of DLs: persistence and liveness. Furthermore, we analyze potential attacks from malicious users and prove that the probability of a successful attack is inversely

Abstract

There is a rapid increase in the cooperative learning paradigm in online learning settings, i.e., federated learning (FL). Unlike most FL settings, there are many situations where the agents are competitive. Each agent would like to learn from others, but the part of the information it shares for others to learn from could be sensitive; thus, it desires its privacy. This work investigates a group of agents working concurrently to solve similar combinatorial bandit problems while maintaining quality constraints. Can these agents collectively learn while keeping their sensitive information confidential by employing differential privacy? We observe that communicating can reduce the regret. However, differential privacy techniques for protecting sensitive information makes the data noisy and may deteriorate than help to improve regret. Hence, we note that it is essential to decide when to communicate and what shared data to learn to strike a functional balance between regret and privacy. For such a federated combinatorial MAB setting, we propose a Privacy-preserving Federated Combinatorial Bandit algorithm, P-FCB. We illustrate the efficacy of P-FCB through simulations. We further show that our algorithm provides an improvement in terms of regret while upholding quality threshold and meaningful privacy guarantees.

Abstract

We formalize a framework for coordinating the funding of projects and sharing the costs among agents with quasi-linear utility functions and individual budgets. Our model contains the classical discrete participatory budgeting model as a special case, while capturing other well-motivated problems. We propose several important axioms and objectives and study how well they can be simultaneously satisfied. One of our main results is that whereas welfare maximization admits an FPTAS, welfare maximization subject to a well-motivated and very weak participation requirement leads to a strong inapproximability result. We show that this result is bypassed if we consider some natural restricted valuations or when we take an average-case heuristic approach.

Abstract

We study fairness in the context of feature-based price discrimination in monopoly markets. We propose a new notion of individual fairness, namely, α-fairness, which guarantees that individuals with similar features face similar prices. First, we study discrete valuation space and give an analytical solution for optimal fair feature-based pricing. We show that the cost of fair pricing is defined as the ratio of expected revenue in optimal featurebased pricing to the expected revenue in an optimal fair feature-based pricing (COF) can be arbitrarily large in general. When the revenue function is continuous and concave with respect to the prices, we show that one can achieve COF strictly less than 2, irrespective of the model parameters. Finally, we provide an algorithm to compute fair feature-based pricing strategy that achieves this COF

Abstract

2022 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain) BLOC KVAC: A Un iversally Acceptable and Ideal Vaccination System on Blockchain Manik a Sharma Center for Securit y, Theory, and Algorithmic Research Intern ationa l Institute of Inform ation Technology, Hyderabad Gach ibowli, Hyderabad, India 500 032 manik a.sharm a @research.iiit.ac.in Kishore Kothap alli Cent er for Securit y, Theo ry, and Algorithmic Research Interna tional Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad Gachibowli, Hyderabad , Indi a 500 032 kisho re @iiit.ac .in Sujit Gujar Machin e Learning Lab International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad Gachib owli, Hyderabad , India 500 032 suj it.gujar @iiit.ac.in Abstract-Vaccines are essential in pro tecting indivi dua ls and commun ities from the risk of ha rmful an d fatal diseases. The wor ld is migra ting towards the digitization of vacci nation docu- mentation. Still, the current digita l vacci nation is a centra lized mode l, lacking a nnive rsal acceptance. A Universally Acceptable an d Id eal Vacci nat ion System (UAIVS ) sho nld possess (a) a sta ndard vaccination cert ificate ver ificat ion algorithm, (h) p r i- vacy to per sonal in form a tion, (c) sca lab ilit y, (d) s npport lor all vacci nat ions, (e) acco u ntab ility for vaccination information access, and (f) a sco pe for scientific researc h a nd d evelopm en t. Blockc ha in tec hno logy int ro dnces d ecentr alizat ion, immn tability, acco unta bility, per sistence, and liveliness. T hese pro per ties ma ke block cha in an ideal can di da te to solve the existing pro blems in digital vacci nat ion. In this pa per, we prop ose a novel blockchain- base d syste m, n am ely BLO CKVAC, to implem ent a UA IVS . F urt her more , o ur wor k provi des a way to track an individ nal's an d fa mily's vacc ination histo ry, which is esse ntial for sc ient ific research a nd developm ent . BLOCKVAC is highly modular, sca l- a ble, an d cost -efficien t, pr oviding eno ugh roo m for fnt n re feature addi tio ns. The c urre nt works lack cost and sca lab ility ana lysis. WI' show thc scalability of o ur system t hro ugh a th oron gh a nalys is. O ur impl em entation shows t hat add ing one vacc inati on re cor d costs 7 . l(j ~2 ~ x 10- 6 ETH ( ~ U.U26US D) for reg istratio n, 2.5089 x 10- 5 ETH ( ~ 0.07 8USD) for vaccina tion, a nd th e syste m ca n easi ly han dl e np to 20K vaccinations per hon r. Ind ex Terms- B1ockc ha in, Eth ere um, Sm art Contrac ts, Public Acco unta bility, Sca lab ilit y I. I N TR O D UC TI O N The vaccination process, also known as imm unization , was introduced in the late 18th century by the British physician Edward Jenn er against the deadly smallpox virus [ I]. Since then. it has become an inevitab le medical proc edur e, protecting individuals and communities from harmful and fatal diseases. The World Hea lth Organi zation (WHO) estimates that vac- cination saves around 2.5 millio n child lives every year [2]. A record of vacci nation details massively aid s in providing qualit y health care to individuals [3]. Whi le secure storage and verificat ion of vaccination details are challenges even within a country, it is tediou s to merge them from across all the countries [4 ]. Moreover. a definitive process is the need of the hour to verify the required vaccinati on certification for travelers when they enter a country. We wou ld like to than k MeitY and Ripp le for fundin g this research . O ver view of existing vac cina tion mod els: Traditional paper- based vaccination records [5] are prone to challenges such as the possibil ity of losing, damaging, or forging the records without any accountability. Digital solutions replace the need for paper, provide an immutable card, and reduc e manual labor [6]. However, the current vacci nation systems follow a centralized model, where the users need to trust the cent ral autho rity. Further. these sys tems are prone to single-point failures and jeopardize data security P 1. Moreover, current vaccination portal s mainly deal with just slot bookings and issuin g non -verifiab le vaccination certificates. Mo tiva tion: Th e Covid-19 pandemic has caused a digital revolution in vaccination data managem ent. Countri es are shifting towards a digital solution to secure vaccination data ami issue certificates. However, such a system should be universally acceptabl e. We identi fy the properties requ ired for such a sys tem and call it a Universally Acceptable and Ideal Vaccination System (UA IVS). We furt her categorize the proper- ties of UAIVS into two subcategories: Universally Acceptable Vaccination System and Ideal Va ccination System. A Universally Acce ptable Vaccination System co

Abstract

We propose a new approach to improving student outcomes - the provision of the dream option that allows a student with a job offer to participate in the placement process again. Comparing three different student preference structures, we show that the dream option improves stability; however, it does not always improve student happiness and rank efficiency. Nevertheless, imposing a particular structure on student preferences, namely the sequential preference condition, improves both student happiness and rank efficiency. We recommend when to use the dream option and when not to use it. © 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

Abstract

Blockchains lie at the heart of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that have shown great promise to revolutionize finance and commerce. Although they are gaining increasing popularity, they face technical challenges when it comes to scaling to support greater demand while maintaining their desirable security properties. In an exciting line of recent work, many researchers have proposed various scalable blockchain protocols that demonstrate the potential to solve these challenges. However, many of these protocols come with the assumptions of honest majority and symmetric network access which may not accurately reflect the real world where the participants may be self-interested or rational. Secondly, these works show that their protocol works in an ideal environment where each party has equal access to the network whereas different parties have varying latencies and network speeds. These assumptions may render the protocols susceptible to security threats in the real world, as highlighted by the literature focused on exploring gametheoretic attacks on these protocols. We propose a scalable blockchain protocol, Interlude, which comes with the typical security guarantees while focusing on game-theoretic soundness and network fairness. The novelty of Interlude is that it has a relatively simple design consisting of a sequence of parallel blocks containing disjoint transaction sets that can be mined quickly followed by a series block that is slow to mine and gives the honest parties in the network time to synchronize. Thus, between the chaos of parallel blocks, our blockchain protocol masquerades an interlude moment of harmony in series blocks that synchronize the network.