Superhero Fatigue…

Discussion on Game Theory

“Had the Kryptonian or the Amazon taken that gamble, they would have lost. They do not have the strength of character to destroy an entire planet to achieve success. You … a human, you’d kill your own kind to win battles, an admirable quality.” - Darkseid to Batman

When Batman has prep-time, he is Omega level. Superhero movies have dominated the box office for the last decade. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in particular has made $25 billion worldwide. My favorite superhero is a toss-up between Batman and The Green Lantern. Superhero archetypes play the same role as myths about Greek gods such as Hades, Zeus and Hercules did in ancient times. They allow the human mind to envision ourselves with amazing capabilities. We try to emulate the personas of these characters and embed their sense of justice and morality into our own lives. What attracts me to Batman and The Green Lantern is the fact that they are human, just like me. The Green Lantern’s ring uses “Will Power” as a weapon to create constructs and solve problems using the power of his imagination. Whatever the Green Lantern can envision, he can manifest as constructs into reality with his willpower. Constructs can be jets, machine guns, architecture, or other objects. Batman is just a man in a Batsuit. It sounds ridiculous, but his special talent is being extremely paranoid and having the resources to buy anything he wants. Batman with prep time can defeat any comic book character at any power level. Not with punches, kicks, or laser beam eyes. Batman uses his mind to come up with plans to counter his foes' strengths and weaknesses. Batman even has a specific set of instructions on how to defeat each member of the Justice League and, most impressive of all, he punked Darkseid.

This scene from Superman/Batman: Apocalypse stopped my breath

Darkseid is the most powerful character in the DC Universe. He is the sole ruler of a fiery hell planet called Apokolips, he has an army of hell spawn and a personal set of select female bodyguards called The Furies led by Granny Goodness. Along with super strength, flight, and laser beams that follow his targets like homing missiles then obliterates them, Darkseid is extremely intelligent. He’s a "new god" bent on conquering the universe while searching for the elusive Anti-Life equation. While Superman and Wonder Woman were busy kicking and punching Darkseid and his overwhelming army on Darkseid’s planet Apokolips. Batman did some reconnaissance and found interconnected storage houses filled with bombs. Presumably for other planets. Batman figured out a way to hack this alien technology and arm all the bombs on the planet. Batman then goes into Darkseid’s throne room and threatens to destroy the planet if Darkseid doesn’t back down. Darkseid punches and kicks Batman, and probably breaks some ribs and bones, but Batman doesn’t back down. Eventually, Darkseid realizes what’s at stake and calls off his army. I’m watching this cartoon with my jaw on the floor. While all the heavy hitters are busy fighting an infinite army of side characters, Batman took down the main Villain without throwing a single punch.

I imagine that O.C’s Times Up was playing in Batman’s head

Speaking of contingencies, I thought Game Theory would be an interesting topic to discuss. After all, the entire blockchain ecosystem uses Game Theory as a fundamental underlying mechanism. Developed by mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern at Princeton University to solve the problems of economics. Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that provides tools to analyze the decisions a group of people will make while engaged in an economic model. It is a science of Strategy & Decision-Making. It is a useful tool to predict optimal decisions each participant is most likely to make based on incentives and gains/losses. Game theory has been used to analyze history, military tactics, politics, business, and logic for computer science. Game Theory was further decimated through the 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, by John von Neumann co-written with Oskar Morgenstern. The prisoner dilemma is the most popular scenario in game theory models. A quick synopsis of this model, 2 prisoners are interrogated separately. The prisoner that snitches on the other get 2 years while the other gets 10 years. There are four possible outcomes, both prisoners confess, prisoner 1 confesses, prisoner 2 confesses, or neither confess to the crime. In this scenario, the game theory model is designed to make confession the ideal outcome. The optimal result saves everyone time and the prisoner that confesses get the most lenient sentence. The main components of a game theory model are the players, the strategy, and the payoff.

Mathematician John von Neumann and Economist Oskar Morgenstern at Princeton University

In Blockchain, game theory allows anonymous nodes all over the world to work together for the common good of the network. Proof Of Work (POW) blockchains are designed so that everyone acting in their self-interest will help the network grow and not hurt it. Miners receive a block reward for successfully compiling a block of transactions. All the miners in the network are simultaneously trying to receive these rewards which secure the network because rewards are only recognized on the longest chain. If a miner cheats his block, that person will not receive rewards. If everyone is cheating, then no one will get rewarded. If everyone plays fairly, then there is an equal shot at securing the mining rewards. If the majority of the network is honest and only a few cheats, the cheaters improve the honest participant's chances of getting a reward. Cheating is a waste of time, and the mining rewards incentivize thousands of strangers to work together in harmony. To maintain a steady transaction time, the difficulty of blocks are adjusted based on how many people are participating.

Bitcoin mining warehouse

Ethereum is transitioning from Proof Of Work (POS) game theory to Proof Of Stake consensus mechanism because the network is too large, and they are wasting a ton of electricity. Proof Of Stake requires users to have a stake in the network that they are willing to risk losing to secure and validate the network. That staked user is chosen by the network to validate the blockchain. The staked user receives a reward for validating the network, but if the validator isn’t a reliable node, then that user will lose some of the money that was staked. The stake can be lost if the chosen validator was incapable of validating a block because their computer was off, Wi-Fi was down, or for any reason at all. If the validator proves to be unreliable, then it will be slashed by losing some of its stake. Validators are chosen based on how much money they have staked, how long they have been staked, and pure randomness. The difficulty in Proof Of Stake is shortened so that a single device can solve it very quickly. To prevent validators from sending themselves free crypto, anyone is allowed to fact-check validators and if proven to be in the wrong then that validator loses all their stake.

Somewhere in this interview, Vitalik explains Ethereum 2’s POS Game Theory

Medallion XLN’s game theory relies on network effects. Our mission is to allow users to own their data. The players are the Medallion XLN main company, the Medallion XLN decentralized community, users not in the Medallion XLN ecosystem, and our adversary Big Tech. Big Tech has tremendous control over their user’s data, but they don’t have control over the user. Being a free market, the user will always have a choice on who they choose to give their digital sovereignty to; The Big Tech giants who will monetize it and do whatever else. Or themselves, through the Medallion XLN infrastructure, where the users can monetize their data, access it anywhere and distribute it to anywhere that supports a Metamask NFT injection. Finally, your data is yours and yours alone. At this point, Medallion XLN’s responsibility is to build more use case constructs for our community to monetize their data on all forms of digital and physical infrastructure. At first, Medallion XLN will be slowly siphoning market share away from Big Tech, but eventually, the word will get out on the better deal that Medallion XLN provides, and we will reach critical mass. This won’t destroy Big Tech, they have way too much money, but it will force them to restructure their monetization model to allow users to own their data. At that point, the real war begins, will Medallion XLN be crafty enough to outmaneuver Big Tech and some of the best minds in the world? We have a contingency model for that phase, but it’s effectiveness, remains to be seen. Medallion XLN will either lose the war and become just another shitcoin, or we’ll win and become a Top 10 cryptocurrency and Top 10 Fortune 500 company. Who is willing to bet on us? Whitepaper release and founder doxxing coming soon. Invest in Medallion XLN’s ICO, bet big on the future!

Thank you for your patience. You won’t be disapointed!

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