Open Problems in a Logic of Gossips

Open Access
Authors
Publication date 22-07-2019
Journal Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science
Event 17th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge
Volume | Issue number 297
Pages (from-to) 1-18
Organisations
  • Interfacultary Research - Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC)
Abstract
Gossip protocols are programs used in a setting in which each agent holds a secret and the aim is to reach a situation in which all agents know all secrets. Such protocols rely on a point-to-point or group communication. Distributed epistemic gossip protocols use epistemic formulas in the component programs for the agents. The advantage of the use of epistemic logic is that the resulting protocols are very concise and amenable for a simple verification.
Recently, we introduced a natural modal logic that allows one to express distributed epistemic gossip protocols and to reason about their correctness. We proved that the resulting protocols are implementable and that all aspects of their correctness, including termination, are decidable. To establish these results we showed that both the definition of semantics and of truth of the underlying logic are decidable. We also showed that the analogous results hold for an extension of this logic with the 'common knowledge' operator.
However, several, often deceptively simple, questions about this logic and the corresponding gossip protocols remain open. The purpose of this paper is to list and elucidate these questions and provide for them an appropriate background information in the form of partial of related results.
Document type Article
Note In: Proceedings Seventeenth Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge : Toulouse, France, 17-19 July 2019. Edited by: Lawrence S. Moss.
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.297.1
Other links http://eptcs.web.cse.unsw.edu.au/content.cgi?TARK2019
Downloads
1907.09097v1 (Final published version)
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