The crypto anarchy game IRL

In 1992, Eric Hughes sent one of the first messages on the Cypherpunks Mailing List. In it, he mentions a game that was played at the first meeting of the cypherpunks.

The crypto-anarchy game we tried out at the first meeting was as good a success as we could have hoped for from an untested idea. The game seems useful and fun enough to warrant continued play and play testing, so we'll be playing again at this and future meetings.

We observed several interesting emergent behaviors in the first session, including resellers and reputation behaviors. We'll play a two hour session this time and discuss it afterwards.

Timothy May later says that about 20 people played the game at the first meeting and even more played it at the second Cypherpunks meeting in October of 1992. Here's how May describes the game:

Eric Hughes and I prepare fake e-money (Monopoly money), envelopes, etc. Participants played various roles, assigned randomly. Some were drug dealers, some were CIA Counter Intelligence agents, looking for moles and information brokers. Valuable information was also distributed.

Various publically-visible transaction regions existed (akin to the anonymous pools we have now). Remailers were simulated by envelopes within envelopes, with each remailer choosing his postage, latency, etc.

(These are things we could simulate easily, but still don't have built into actual remailers!)

The game went on for several hours. Often chaotic, with lots of messages lost (humans are fallible and don't run complicated protocols very well).

But it seems that the game was never played a third time. May suggests that the game was ultimately unsuccessful because

I think you'll find that intelligent folks won't have much patience and nonintelligent or "differently interested" folks will not want to play.

I have gone through pretty much the whole Cypherpunks Mailing List archive (especially 1992-1994) looking for the exact rules of the crypto anarchy game. Unfortunately, I've only found references to game play and suggested alterations. This is enough though to rebuild a version of the game that is probably pretty close to what they played -- even if it isn't an exact copy of the ruleset. (If anyone knows of a place where the actual rules of the crypto anarchy game were recorded, I'd be very interested).

My version (described below) is missing a few pieces (valuable information?), but I think it could actually work as a fun game for a large group of people. Especially if people got in to the anarchy part of it (eg. remailers becoming sellers). I think also that I need to rethink the victory conditions. I'd love to hear your suggestions before I try to get my whole family to play this at Thanksgiving.

How to play the crypto anarchy game

The goal of the game is for players to successfully conduct business under the watchful eyes of others.

ROLES:

• buyers (6 players)
• sellers (4 players)
• law enforcement (3 players)
• remailer (4 players)

OBJECTIVES:

• buyer your objective is to successfully purchase your assigned item while communicating only in public.
• seller your objective is to successfully sell your assigned item (represented by tokens) while communicating only in public.
• law enforcement your objective is to discover the true name and
• remailers your objective is to make as much money as possible (including accepting bribes form law enforcement)

The game ends when 1) a buyer successfully gains possession of the token representing an item they are trying to buy or 2) law enforcement successfully identifies a seller and the item they are selling. (Possibly the game should simply be timed and points assigned to successful trades or busts by law enforcement, tallied at the end.)

GAMEPLAY:

All players are given $100 of starting money. Each seller is secretly given tokens representing the item they are supposed to sell. (I'm not sure if buyers need a specific item they are wanting or if buying any item off a seller will suffice). Players may exchange money in person or via sealed envelopes.

There is a public message board. Any player may send a message to the public message board (either delivered directly by them or through a remailer). Remailers may advertise their rates on the message board. Sellers may advertise the items they wish to sell and their prices. Law enforcement may post anything they want on the message board. All messages sent to the public message board are opened and displayed for anyone to read. All players may adopt any pseudonym they choose. However, actual trades must occur in person.

Play begins with the four remailers, who must advertise their postage (how much they charge to forward a message) and their latency (how long they will wait to forward a message) on the message board. Buyers and sellers may post messages to the public message board, enclosing these message in one or more envelopes addressed to a remailer or remailers. Each envelope must contain postage sufficient to be forwarded by the remailer to which it is addressed. When a remailer receives a message

Example. If Player 1 wants to send a message to the message board, Player 1 may put their message in an envelope and write Message Board on the outside. Then Player 1 may put this in an envelope with $2 and mark Remailer 1 on the outside. Player 1 may then put this envelope in another with $1 postage and mark Remailer 3 on the outside. Then Player 1 may put this in an envelope with $1 postage and mark Remailer 2 on the outside and so on (repeating remailers if desired). Player 1 will then deliver the message to the remailer whose name is on the outermost envelope and that remailer will open it and if there is sufficient postage deliver the message to the remailer named on the next envelope and so on. When the last remailer opens the envelope and sees Message Board they open the letter and put it on the message board table for anyone to read. The same procedure is followed for letters addressed to specific players, accept the final remailer does not open the envelope with a player's name on it, rather laying it on the table in front of them for the player to come collect.

Law enforcement may:

• Observe players placing envelopes in public collection areas.
• Watch direct exchanges of money and commodities.
• Record which players collect mail from pseudonymous mailboxes.
• Offer payments for information.
• Attempt to infiltrate economic transactions.
• Persuade remailer operators to reveal forwarding information.
• Publish misleading claims or attempt to induce careless disclosures.
• To mimic encryption, no one is allowed to open an envelope except the person to whom it is addressed.

Any law enforcement player may accuse any other player of being a seller of a particular item. The accused player must respond honestly. If the law enforcement is incorrect about any aspect of their accusation, they are immediately out of the game. Therefore, all non law enforcement players have an interest in sending many messages to other players to increase the likelihood that law enforcement makes a mistake.