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COMPEL Glossary / market-topology

Market topology

A multi-agent topology in which agents bid on tasks and a market mechanism assigns the task to the most-suitable agent — typically via contract-net protocol.

What this means in practice

Scales well on heterogeneous task queues; governance concerns include bid-manipulation and collusion risk.

Synonyms

auction-based MAS , contract-net topology

See also

  • Multi-agent orchestration — The architectural coordination of multiple cooperating agents — via hierarchical, market, swarm, or actor topologies — to achieve collective tasks.
  • Hierarchical topology — A multi-agent topology in which a boss agent delegates sub-tasks to worker agents and aggregates their results.
  • Multi-agent collusion — Emergent behavior where multiple AI agents coordinate against principal intent — sharing information, price-fixing, bypassing oversight, or colluding on a task the principals did not authorize.