Game of Coding With an Unknown Adversary

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Main Authors: Akbarinodehi, Hanzaleh, Moradi, Parsa, Maddah-Ali, Mohammad Ali
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Akbarinodehi, Hanzaleh
Moradi, Parsa
Maddah-Ali, Mohammad Ali
author_facet Akbarinodehi, Hanzaleh
Moradi, Parsa
Maddah-Ali, Mohammad Ali
contents Motivated by emerging decentralized applications, the \emph{game of coding} framework has been recently introduced to address scenarios where the adversary's control over coded symbols surpasses the fundamental limits of traditional coding theory. Still, the reward mechanism available in decentralized systems, motivates the adversary to act rationally. While the decoder, as the data collector (DC), has an acceptance and rejection mechanism, followed by an estimation module, the adversary aims to maximize its utility, as an increasing function of (1) the chance of acceptance (to increase the reward), and (2) estimation error. On the other hand, the decoder also adjusts its acceptance rule to maximize its own utility, as (1) an increasing function of the chance of acceptance (to keep the system functional), (2) decreasing function of the estimation error. Prior works within this framework rely on the assumption that the game is complete, that is, both the DC and the adversary are fully aware of each other's utility functions. However, in practice, the decoder is often unaware of the utility of the adversary. To address this limitation, we develop an algorithm enabling the DC to commit to a strategy that achieves within the vicinity of the equilibrium, without knowledge of the adversary's utility function. Our approach builds on an observation that at the equilibrium, the relationship between the probability of acceptance and the mean squared error (MSE) follows a predetermined curve independent of the specific utility functions of the players. By exploiting this invariant relationship, the DC can iteratively refine its strategy based on observable parameters, converging to a near-optimal solution. We provide theoretical guarantees on sample complexity and accuracy of the proposed scheme.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_07109
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Game of Coding With an Unknown Adversary
Akbarinodehi, Hanzaleh
Moradi, Parsa
Maddah-Ali, Mohammad Ali
Information Theory
Machine Learning
Motivated by emerging decentralized applications, the \emph{game of coding} framework has been recently introduced to address scenarios where the adversary's control over coded symbols surpasses the fundamental limits of traditional coding theory. Still, the reward mechanism available in decentralized systems, motivates the adversary to act rationally. While the decoder, as the data collector (DC), has an acceptance and rejection mechanism, followed by an estimation module, the adversary aims to maximize its utility, as an increasing function of (1) the chance of acceptance (to increase the reward), and (2) estimation error. On the other hand, the decoder also adjusts its acceptance rule to maximize its own utility, as (1) an increasing function of the chance of acceptance (to keep the system functional), (2) decreasing function of the estimation error. Prior works within this framework rely on the assumption that the game is complete, that is, both the DC and the adversary are fully aware of each other's utility functions. However, in practice, the decoder is often unaware of the utility of the adversary. To address this limitation, we develop an algorithm enabling the DC to commit to a strategy that achieves within the vicinity of the equilibrium, without knowledge of the adversary's utility function. Our approach builds on an observation that at the equilibrium, the relationship between the probability of acceptance and the mean squared error (MSE) follows a predetermined curve independent of the specific utility functions of the players. By exploiting this invariant relationship, the DC can iteratively refine its strategy based on observable parameters, converging to a near-optimal solution. We provide theoretical guarantees on sample complexity and accuracy of the proposed scheme.
title Game of Coding With an Unknown Adversary
topic Information Theory
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07109