Decentralised Norm Monitoring in Open Multi-Agent Systems (Extended Abstract)

We propose an approach to norm monitoring in open multi-agents systems (MAS) in which monitoring is performed by the agents comprising the MAS. Using ideas from scrip systems, we show how to design mechanisms where agents are incentivised to monitor the actions of other agents for norm violations. Crtically, the cost of providing incentives is not borne by the MAS. Instead, monitoring incentives come from (scrip) fees for accessing the services provided by the MAS. In some cases perfect monitoring (and hence enforcement) can be achieved: no norms will be violated in equilibrium. In other cases, we show that, while it is impossible to achieve perfect enforcement, we can get arbitrarily close; we can make the probability of a norm violation in equilibrium arbitrarily small.