# [LINK] The P + epsilon Attack (Precommitment in cryptoeconomics)

Vitalik Buterin has a new post about an [interesting theoretical attack against Bitcoin](https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/01/28/p-epsilon-attack/). The idea relies on the assumption that the attacker can credibly commit to something quite crazy. The crazy thing is this: paying out 25.01 BTC to all the people who help him in his attack to steal 25 BTC from everyone, _but only if the attack fails_. This leads to a weird payoff matrix where the dominant strategy is to help him in the attack. The attack succeeds, and no payoff is made.

Of course, smart contracts make such crazy commitments perfectly possible, so this is a bit less theoretical than it sounds. But even as an abstract though experiment about decision theories, it looks pretty interesting.

By the way, Vitalik Buterin is really on a roll. Just a week ago he had a [thought-provoking blog post](https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/01/23/superrationality-daos/) about how [Decentralized Autonomous Organizations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_Autonomous_Organization) could possibly utilize a concept often discussed here: decision theory in a setup where agents can inspect each others' source code. It was [shared on LW Discussion](/r/discussion/lw/lko/link_superrationality_and_daos/), but earned less exposure than I think it deserved.

EDIT 1: One smart commenter of the original post spotted that an isomorphic, extremely cool game was already [proposed by billionaire Warren Buffett](http://www.gametheory.net/News/Items/013.html). Does this thing already have a name in game theory maybe?

EDIT 2: I wrote the game up in detail for some old-school game theorist friends:

The attacker orchestrates a game with 99 players. The attacker himself does not participate in the game.

Rules:

Each of the players can either defect or cooperate, in the usual game theoretic setup where they do announce their decisions simultaneously, without side channels. We call "aggregate outcome" the decision that was made by the majority of the players. If the aggregate outcome is defection, we say that the attack succeeds. A player's payoff consists of two components:

1\. If her decision coincides with the aggregate outcome, the player gets 10 utilons.

and simultaneously:

2\. if the attack succeeds, the attacker gets 1 utilons from each of the 99 players, regardless of their own decision.

                | Cooperate  | Defect

Attack fails    |        10  | 0

Attack succeeds |        -1  | 9

  

There are two equilibria, but the second payoff component breaks the symmetry, and everyone will cooperate.

Now the attacker spices things up, by making a **credible commitment** before the game. ("Credible" simply means that somehow they make sure that the promise can not be broken. The classic way to achieve such things is an escrow, but so called smart contracts are emerging as a method for making fully unbreakable commitments.)

The attacker's commitment is quite counterintuitive: he promises that he will pay 11 utilons to each of the **defecting** players, but **only if the attack fails**.

Now the payoff looks like this:

                | Cooperate  | Defect

Attack fails    |        10  | 11

Attack succeeds |        -1  | 9

  

Defection became a dominant strategy. The clever thing, of course, is that if everyone defects, then the attacker reaches his goal without paying out anything.