A contract among autonomous agents to deal with egalitarian social welfare

Abstract

Auction security has been a major challenge for researchers in this area. For example, one of the biggest problems has always been the trust in a third party, an intermediary, which is the one who usually conducts the auction and knows the bids made by the participants. Over time, traditional methods have been overtaken by new technologies that eliminate the problems that arise when using traditional methods. Blockchain technology allows us to use its inherent characteristics of privacy, traceability and decentralization to conduct auctions with a much higher level of security and to execute auctions while reducing transaction costs. In addition, the automation of operations provided by smart contracts allows us to eliminate the intermediary, leading to additional cost savings. Furthermore, in contrast to previous technologies, the pseudo-anonymity of blockchain allows us to verify the authenticity of data, mitigating malicious behavior on the part of agents. In this paper we address this challenge; we present a smart contract that allows us to run an auction within the Ethereum blockchain at a relatively low cost, eliminating the intermediary and guaranteeing the trust of the agents involved in the auction. In particular, we concentrate on dealing with egalitarian social welfare, where the goal is to maximize the utility of the agent whose utility turns out to be minimal.