[heavenlyhash]

Changing the precision on the clocks and inducing some level of randomness seems like a good idea. Combine this with styles of orders that are conditional (e.g., buy if price <= x) and we'd have something that looks a lot like FP's "atoms" -- apply the function, and if the change isn't invalid due to race conditions, keep. Perhaps this might result in bids that are more "say what you mean" than the current economically favorable games of bluffery, opponent-baiting, and chicken.

The El Farol Bar Problem is great reading; thanks for that link.

[harmegido]

I don't think it's that good of an idea. If the allocation is random, participants will counter by sending in more orders than they want, to increase their chance of getting a fill. The microstructure will look similar to a market with a pro-rata matching algo. This article has a good discussion of some of the downsides of pro-rata http://www.advantagefutures.com/is-pro-rata-an-accident-wait....

But it's unclear to me how the random component would work that you all are talking about. Is my resting order subject to a random cancel delay as well? If it's not, then we still have a requirement for speed, as cancelling soon-to-be bad orders is arguably more important than placing soon-to-be good aggressive orders. And if it is subject to a delay, spreads are going to be MUCH wider, losing individual investors more money than they currently are to the current system.

[msellout]

The way I imagined the randomness aspect is the same way it's handled now for two orders received at the same time according to the machine's precision of time perception.

Unfortunately, a loss of efficiency (increased spreads) is the price we will pay for less frequent crashes/spikes.