Research on Compatibility Strategy of Multi-Sided Platform Competition in Blockchain Era
With the explosive growth of the distributed application(DApp)industry,the multi-sided platform business model has become an important part of the digital economy system.The multi-sided platform structure,where groups such as DApp developers,DApp users,token users,and miners collaborate within the blockchain network,make the competition issues among blockchain multi-sided platforms more complex.The emergence of a new multi-sided platform structure in the market and the unique,completely open environment of the blockchain network make the multi-sided platform competition in the blockchain era more complex,giving rise to decision-making problems in which the compatibility strategy plays a crucial role.This paper focuses on the key problem of dynamic selection of compatibility strategy,choosing ETH and EOS as the research objects,constructs a game model to analyze the compatibility decision-making process in the competition of different life cycles of blockchain multi-sided platforms,which has important theoretical and practical significance.This paper constructs a game model describing the competition relationship between ETH and EOS,and obtains the payment matrix of the compatibility game by analyzing the equilibrium states under four scenarios:mutually incompatible,two-way compatible,ETH one-way compatible,and EOS one-way compatible.Then,it derives the optimal compatibility strategy.Simultaneously,the paper takes the DApps"Crypto Kitties"and"Blockchain Cuties"competing on the two platforms as cases for numerical analysis to verify the effectiveness of the model.This paper finds that when the blockchain platforms aim to maximize profits,the optimal strategy for the ETH platform is an incompatible strategy;the optimal strategy for the EOS platform is related to the platform size gap,choosing a compatible strategy when the gap is large,and an incompatible strategy when the gap is small.When the goal is to maximize the number of DApp developers,both platforms'optimal strategies are incompatible.Therefore,the optimal compatibility strategy of the platform needs to be dynamically adjusted in combination with the changes in the industry development stage goals.Moreover,sensitivity analysis reveals that when both platforms'optimal strategies are incompatible,platform profits are independent of market size and related to the platform size gap and market competition intensity;when the optimal strategy is EOS one-way compatibility,platform profits are related to market size and competition intensity,but not to the platform size gap.The innovation of this paper lies in considering the unique fully open competitive environment in the blockchain era and the unique charging policies of the DApp industry different from traditional platforms,studying the competition issues of asymmetric scale platforms with different charging policies in the multi-sided market under multi-homing users.By constructing a game model and using numerical analysis for validation,this paper discusses for the first time the optimal choice of compatibility strategies in the competition of blockchain multi-sided platforms at different stages of industry life cycles,analyzing the sensitivity of parameters such as market size,platform size gap,and market competition intensity under the optimal compatibility strategy.The results show that,in the development period,the choice of a compatible strategy by blockchain platforms is independent of market size,and the optimal strategy of all platforms is an incompatible strategy.This is because in the industry development period of rapid market expansion,the development goal of all platforms is to absorb more DApp developers and create a good ecology of multi-agent interaction among developers,users,and platforms.At this time,from the perspective of cost-benefit,developers will spontaneously shift from blockchain platforms that adopt compatible strategies to blockchain platforms that adopt incompatible strategies,weakening the competitiveness of platforms that choose compatible strategies,and each platform should shift its management focus to incompatible independent development.In the maturity period,the optimal strategy of the scale advantage platform(ETH)is still incompatible,while the compatible strategy of the scale disadvantage platform(EOS)is related to the platform size gap.This shows that the classic"winner-take-all"phenomenon in the Internet still exists in the blockchain era.Therefore,in the maturity period of the industry of stock competition,the development goal of the blockchain platform should turn to maximize its own profit,focusing on improving functions and optimizing service processes.This is consistent with the development process of the industry in reality.Early platforms such as ETH,which have the first advantage,have not developed cross-chain compatibility technology,while more and more emerging platforms begin to apply cross-chain technology to achieve different level of compatibility.These results have important guiding significance for the formulation of compatibility strategies in the competition of blockchain multi-sided platforms and will help to promote the development of the blockchain industry.
blockchainDAppgame theoryindustry life cyclecompatibility strategy
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