Email from Octopus about Grants Math & Minimum Bound

Types of Strategic Play - Defining Collusion

"There are 2 types of account based collution."

  1. Collusion - Instead of both of use donating $2 to the same grant, they both donate $1 to each to maximize matching pool allocation. (Pic https://share.getcloudapp.com/L1udpmN9)
  2. Sybil - Creating sock puppet accounts

Both use the same basic strategy of splitting up the total amount available to maximize matching allocations.

What is the BEST strategy? (Best being getting the most from the matching pool)

The best strategy to collude, whether sybil or not, is to spread your donations out to as many accounts as possible. This meaning the smallest amount possible.

Here is the equation for the optimum strategy.

x = number of users (fake or real)

b = budget

max = x(x-1)b/2(x+b) increasing x is unbounded

This means that the more colluding accounts, the stronger the effect on matching allocation. It is unbounded and exponential meaning we have to set a lower donation limit. Maybe $1?

SIDE NOTE: Creating more grants does not help a grant creator to get more money.

Implementing the CLR algorithm through matrices.

Matrix-ization and/or Vector-ization