How to Sign Paper Contracts? Conjectures & Evidence Related to Equitable & Efficient Collaborative Task Scheduling

This paper explores ways of performing commutative tasks by $N$ parties. Tasks are defined as {\sl commutative} if the order at which parties perform tasks can be freely changed without affecting the final result. It is easy to see that arbitrary $N$-party commutative tasks cannot be completed in less than $N-1$ basic time units. We conjecture that arbitrary $N$-party commutative tasks cannot be performed in $N-1$ time units by exchanging less than $4N-6$ messages and provide computational evidence in favor this conjecture. We also explore the most equitable commutative task protocols.

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Source https://inria.hal.science/hal-00934338
Author Brier, Eric, Naccache, David, Xia, Li-Yao
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 7, 2026, 07:48 (UTC)
Created May 7, 2026, 07:48 (UTC)
Identifier Report N°: IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive 2013: 432 (2013)
Language en
contributor Ingenico Group S.A.
creator Brier, Eric
date 2013-05-07T00:00:00
harvest_object_id a07f88c5-c44c-4e88-b080-23ae06991504
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2025-11-24T00:00:00
set_spec type:REPORT