The paper introduces CASTLE, a framework for fully decentralized multi‑agent reinforcement learning that uses two offline‑trained world models to provide in‑context guidance to independent agents. A Local Dynamics World Model captures each agent’s trajectory dynamics, while a Semantic‑Social World Model predicts short‑horizon task and social outcomes for candidate actions based on counterfactual simulator rollouts. During online learning, these frozen models supply prediction logits to an independent PPO policy, enabling agents to compare potential actions prospectively rather than relying solely on scalar rewards. CASTLE outperforms existing baselines on several multi‑particle benchmark tasks, achieving the highest mean final scores across 30 seeds.
By Fernando Martinez, Tao Li, Yingdong Lu, Juntao Chen
The paper investigates how to infer agents’ underlying incentives in strategic multi‑agent settings, where traditional inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) may fail to produce rewards that guide optimal play. It introduces the concept of strategic identifiability and shows that learning from a fixed pair of policies can be insufficient regardless of sample size. To address this, the authors propose an active IRL algorithm for two‑player repeated Stackelberg games, combining maximum‑likelihood estimation with experimental design to achieve finite‑sample guarantees on sub‑optimality, and validate the approach in an anti‑poaching scenario.
By Antoine Bergerault, Cyrille Kone, Giorgia Ramponi
arXiv:2512. 13666v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The security and decentralization of Proof-of-Work (PoW) have been well-tested in existing blockchain systems.
By Weihang Cao, Mustafa Doger, Sennur Ulukus
Incentive programs are central to user acquisition in decentralized finance, but many reward systems rely on raw volume, transaction count, and wallet count, making them vulnerable to bots and sybil operations. We present ZAPs, a reward attribution framework that combines economic contribution scoring with adversarial robustness.
The paper introduces Hierarchical Reinforcement and Collective Learning (HRCL), a framework that combines multi‑agent reinforcement learning (MARL) with decentralized coordination. HRCL uses MARL at a high level to generate strategic guidance that limits the decision space for low‑level agents, enabling efficient short‑term coordination while considering long‑term effects. Experiments on synthetic, energy‑management, and drone‑swarm scenarios demonstrate faster convergence and significant reductions in system‑wide and individual costs compared to standalone MARL.
By Chuhao Qin, Evangelos Pournaras
arXiv:2606. 18384v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Hierarchical Federated Learning (HFL) enables scalable collaborative model training across distributed devices while preserving data privacy.
By Seyed Salar Ghazi, Kaiwen Zhang, Mehdi feizi, Hans-Arno Jacobsen
The paper proposes mechanisms for federated learning that both incentivize strategic data owners to contribute fully and learn a high‑quality model. The first mechanism, UPBReD, jointly updates client contributions and the model, converging to a Nash equilibrium that may involve under‑contribution. The second mechanism, 2P‑UPBReD, introduces budget‑balanced transfers to make full contribution a dominant strategy, ensuring convergence to the optimal model while guaranteeing that all clients prefer to participate. Subsequent extensions (T‑2P‑UPBReD) further enforce truthful reporting of contributions and gradients without running a deficit, and experiments on CIFAR‑10, FEMNIST, and Twitter demonstrate that 2P‑UPBReD achieves welfare comparable to FedAvg trained on all data.
By Drashthi Doshi, Avishek Ghosh, Swaprava Nath
arXiv:2605. 21115v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a promising paradigm for managing electric vehicle (EV) battery data in intelligent transportation systems (ITS), enabling privacy-preserving tasks such as anomaly detection and capacity estimation.
By Mouhamed Amine Bouchiha, Abdelaziz Amara Korba, Yacine Ghamri-Doudane
arXiv:2508. 13661v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Centralized Training with Decentralized Execution (CTDE) is the dominant paradigm in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), enabling agents to act independently at test time while leveraging additional information during training.
By Maciej Wojtala, Bogusz Stefa\'nczyk, Dominik Bogucki, {\L}ukasz Lepak, Pawe{\l} Wawrzy\'nski
arXiv:2610.27293v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Safe Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (SMARL) aims to learn cooperative control policies under prescribed safety constraints. Al- though existing...
By Taozheng Zhu, Shixiong Jiang, Fanxin Kong
arXiv:2607. 27859v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Incentive programs are central to user acquisition in decentralized finance, but many reward systems rely on raw volume, transaction count, and wallet count, making them vulnerable to bots and sybil operations.
By Girish G N, Ashutosh Sahoo, Ajay Bhat, Akshay SP, Gurukiran S, Parag Paul, Dhanashekar Kandaswamy
The paper introduces CURB, a reward‑shaping framework that penalizes the total variation distance between an agent’s action distributions under cooperation and defection histories, thereby preventing collusive equilibria in repeated games. By linking empirical Q‑learning collusion to Simple Penal Codes, the authors prove that any non‑trivial SPC can be neutralized, and demonstrate CURB’s effectiveness in both tabular and deep Q‑learning settings for Bertrand and Cournot competition.
By Karthik Sivachandran, Rohan Paleja