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Federated learning at edge systems not only mitigates privacy concerns by keeping data localized but also leverages edge computing resources to enable real-time AI inference and decision-making. In a blockchain-based federated learning framework over edge clouds, edge servers as clients can contribute private data or computing resources to the overall training or mining task for secure model aggregation. To overcome the impractical assumption that edge servers will voluntarily join training or mining, it is crucial to design an incentive mechanism that motivates edge servers to achieve optimal training and mining outcomes. In this paper, we investigate the incentive mechanism design for a semi-asynchronous blockchain-based federated edge learning system. We model the resource pricing mechanism among edge servers and task publishers as a Stackelberg game and prove the existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium in such a game. We then propose an iterative algorithm based on the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) to achieve the optimal strategies for each participating edge server. Finally, our simulation results verify the convergence and efficiency of our proposed scheme.
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This content will become publicly available on April 11, 2026
DualGFL: Federated Learning with a Dual-Level Coalition-Auction Game
Despite some promising results in federated learning using game-theoretical methods, most existing studies mainly employ a one-level game in either a cooperative or competitive environment, failing to capture the complex dynamics among participants in practice. To address this issue, we propose DualGFL, a novel federated learning framework with a dual-level game in cooperative-competitive environments. DualGFL includes a lower-level hedonic game where clients form coalitions and an upper-level multi-attribute auction game where coalitions bid for training participation.At the lower-level DualGFL, we introduce a new auction-aware utility function and propose a Pareto-optimal partitioning algorithm to find a Pareto-optimal partition based on clients' preference profiles.At the upper-level DualGFL, we formulate a multi-attribute auction game with resource constraints and derive equilibrium bids to maximize coalitions' winning probabilities and profits. A greedy algorithm is proposed to maximize the utility of the central server.Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate DualGFL's effectiveness in improving both server utility and client utility.
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- PAR ID:
- 10590934
- Publisher / Repository:
- AAAI
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
- Volume:
- 39
- Issue:
- 15
- ISSN:
- 2159-5399
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 15904 to 15912
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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