A Simple Mechanism to Maintain Peer's Cooperativeness: The Peer's RPS Dilemma

摘要

In this paper we make use of a genetic algorithm for the simulation and study of decentralized peer to peer (P2P) communities. We also define a formalism, based on evolutionary game theory, to use as the formal framework in which to analyze the emergence of cooperativeness in this type of networks. Traditionally, peers' interactions have been represented and analyzed by considering a Cooperate/Free-ride Social Dilemma (Peer's Dilemma), equivalent in many ways to the well known Prisoner's Dilemma. In a similar way, all previous formalisms considered participation in each interaction as compulsory. The model and the simulator presented in this paper will allow us to reason about the emergence of cooperativeness between non-incentivized anonymous peers, and it will serve to prove that peer's optional participation in the Cooperate/Free-ride Social Dilemma suffices to maintain acceptable levels of network performance in large P2P communities.