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arXiv · 2510.05986

A Small Collusion is All You Need

Yotam Gafni
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Abstract

Transaction Fee Mechanisms (TFMs) study auction design in the Blockchain context, and emphasize robustness against miner and user collusion, moreso than traditional auction theory. \cite{chung2023foundations} introduce the notion of a mechanism being $c$-Side-Contract-Proof ($c$-SCP), i.e., robust to a collusion of the miner and $c$ users. Later work \cite{chung2024collusion,welfareIncreasingCollusion} shows a gap between the $1$-SCP and $2$-SCP classes. We show that the class of $2$-SCP mechanisms equals that of any $c$-SCP with $c\geq 2$, under a relatively minor assumption of consistent tie-breaking. In essence, this implies that any mechanism vulnerable to collusion, is also vulnerable to a small collusion.

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Yotam Gafni. 2025-10-07. A Small Collusion is All You Need. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05986

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