Two and three player non-zero sum games for contract writers.
For the purposes expressed here, “peer-to-peer” refers to a two player game, where a “trustless” third player takes form as software, and acts as an arbitrator, referee, or umpire to the peered two players in their game of signatures.
In reference to single, double, and triple entry accounting methodology, the third player also takes form as software, and acts as an arbitrator, referee, or umpire to the peered two players in their game of financial ledger entries.
The two players are assumed to hold importance as individuals or groups, and where symmetry is created in this assumption, the representation of each peer doesn’t require actual identities to be disclosed (creating an equality in bargaining skill through pseudonymity).
In the genealogy of zero-sum and non-zero sum game theory, we can also add further assumptions to create cooperative benefits in the peer-to-peer arrangement — there can be efficiency by the Pareto accepted definition; rational expectations which become invariant over time, as each peer adjusts to the other; and independence of irrelevant alternatives to the two players, as expressed by computational power of each signature (proof of work).
The two player game becomes determined by the assumptions given here, which leads to a Nash bargaining solution through a coalitional or cooperative game occurring by recursion, central to which is contract integrity.
It’s also a description of the bitcoin design and the transferable utility created in the coin minting, suggesting further possibilities for the basis of human trust paradigms where the trusted third player (the software, as an invisible hand) is game theoretically mitigating on verbal complications in the two player peer-to-peer bargain.
