Rational secret sharing

Abstract

Recent work has attempted to bridge the fields of Cryptography and Game Theory in order to create more robust protocols that allow for a variety of player types. A keystone functionality used in cryptography is Secret Sharing. While there are several well known, efficient protocols that implement Secret Sharing in the Cryptographic model, designing a Rational Secret Sharing protocol which works in the Game Theoretic model has proved challenging. In this thesis, we contrast several recently proposed protocols for Rational Secret Sharing based on their channel models, utility tolerances, equilibrium types, and efficiencies. We also discuss two more general results bridging Cryptography and Game Theory that can be used to construct Rational Secret Sharing protocols. Finally, we highlight several issues of context that influence the ways in which Rational Secret Sharing protocols might be used.