# kaal:claim:3782210-007

**Claim.** As a network grows its members become more anonymous and individually less important, which makes cheating more locally enticing and less globally noticeable, so the system eventually collapses once cheating is obviously the best individual strategy.

**Type.** mechanism  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- networks that grow large
- networks lacking a secure reputation mechanism

**Source quote.**

> As the network grows, however, the members become more anonymous. Individually they become less im- portant, so cheating is more locally enticing and less noticeable globally. Eventually (or immediately) the system will collapse when it becomes obvious cheating is the best individual strategy.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *The Importance of Reputation for the Evolution of Decentralization* (2021), Chapter. Reputation, page 2

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, The Importance of Reputation for the Evolution of Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782210

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `9cc531ab239f6266c8aeddcc8e54f4c06029c44e825444bee137bbcc0c9d0a8e` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202021%20-%20The%20Importance%20of%20Reputation%20for%20the%20Evolution%20of%20Decentralization.pdf

**Failure mode.** Anonymity dilution at scale  (family: sybil-and-identity-attack)

**Topics.** dao

**Keywords.** scaling, anonymity, cheating, network-collapse, dao-failure

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.