# Sybil-Proof Diffusion Auction in Social Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.01984 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01984/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Nov 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Mechanism Design in Social Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.03627/) (2017)
- [Selling Multiple Items via Social Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02703/) (2019)
- [Strategy-Proof and Non-Wasteful Multi-Unit Auction via Social Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08809/) (2019)
- [Diffusion and Auction on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.09604/) (2019)
- [Emerging Methods of Auction Design in Social Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00381/) (2021)
- [Structure-based Sybil Detection in Social Networks via Local Rule-based Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.04321/) (2018)
- [Fixed-price Diffusion Mechanism Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05450/) (2019)
- [Redistribution Mechanism on Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.09335/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Clone-Robust Weights in Metric Spaces: Handling Redundancy Bias for Benchmark Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03576/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A diffusion auction is a market to sell commodities over a social network, where the challenge is to incentivize existing buyers to invite their neighbors in the network to join the market. Existing mechanisms have been designed to solve the challenge in various settings, aiming at desirable properties such as non-deficiency, incentive compatibility and social welfare maximization. Since the mechanisms are employed in dynamic networks with ever-changing structures, buyers could easily generate fake nodes in the network to manipulate the mechanisms for their own benefits, which is commonly known as the Sybil attack. We observe that strategic agents may gain an unfair advantage in existing mechanisms through such attacks. To resist this potential attack, we propose two diffusion auction mechanisms, the Sybil tax mechanism (STM) and the Sybil cluster mechanism (SCM), to achieve both Sybil-proofness and incentive compatibility in the single-item setting. Our proposal provides the first mechanisms to protect the interests of buyers against Sybil attacks with a mild sacrifice of social welfare and revenue.