<p>I am reading the paper "The Blockchain Folk Theorem"  by Biais et al (2019) (<a href="http://publications.ut-capitole.fr/26234/1/32/5/1662/5427771" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://publications.ut-capitole.fr/26234/1/32/5/1662/5427771</a>). It is a stochastic game and the authors include a sunspot random variable to "enable players to coordinate their actions using a public randomization device". I went around and tried to look more into this and I couldn't really find any intuitive explanation for what a public randomization device is (there seems to be some information on the mathematical properties of including such a device, specifically the authors reference a paper on noisy stochastic games by Duggan (2012) (<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3982/ECTA10125" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3982/ECTA10125</a>)). </p>

<p>I guess my question is, could anyone here provide some explanation of this concept? Or even just some reference to better understanding the concept of public randomization devices?</p>

<game-theory>
Public randomization device
Ali
# Public randomization device

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-04-25)

I am reading the paper "The Blockchain Folk Theorem" by Biais et al (2019) (<http://publications.ut-capitole.fr/26234/1/32/5/1662/5427771>). It is a stochastic game and the authors include a sunspot random variable to "enable players to coordinate their actions using a public randomization device". I went around and tried to look more into this and I couldn't really find any intuitive explanation for what a public randomization device is (there seems to be some information on the mathematical properties of including such a device, specifically the authors reference a paper on noisy stochastic games by Duggan (2012) (<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3982/ECTA10125>)).

I guess my question is, could anyone here provide some explanation of this concept? Or even just some reference to better understanding the concept of public randomization devices?

**Tags:** game-theory

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## 0 answers

