Mechanism Design Without Disclosure: Committing to and Running Hidden Mechanisms
This work addresses the problem of information leakage in mechanism design, offering a novel solution for designers who wish to keep their mechanisms private while maintaining trust.
The paper introduces a cryptographic framework that enables a mechanism designer to commit to and run any mechanism without disclosing it, while still allowing players to verify incentive properties and outcomes. This is achieved using zero-knowledge proofs, eliminating the need for mediators.
A central tenet in mechanism design is the ability to irrevocably commit to a mechanism. Commitment is achieved by public declaration, letting players verify incentive properties in advance and the outcome in retrospect. However, public declaration can reveal superfluous information that is private to the mechanism designer, such as her target function or costs. We propose a new approach to commitment, and show how to commit to, and run, any given mechanism without disclosing it, while enabling the verification of incentive properties and the outcome -- all without any mediators. Our framework leverages zero-knowledge proofs -- a cornerstone of modern cryptographic theory.