Author: ZmnSCPxj 2018-03-12 06:46:39
Published on: 2018-03-12T06:46:39+00:00
The Party, a miner-strong group with control over the government of an entire country, could censor transactions that do not give it non-zero amounts of coins. If The Party has enough power over miners or is composed of miners, it can censor transactions based on heuristics such as at least one output goes to The Party and the number of inputs equals the number of vote-coins that go to The Party output. This prevents mixing, and other parties may end up voting by their controlled hash power rather than anything else. Proof-of-stake may be used to mitigate this, but no solution exists yet. A multi-asset international blockchain with confidential assets can also help prevent centralization. However, the trust in miners is limited to the fees paid to them, effectively buying a portion of hashrate in a fair auction. Miners will charge as much as they can for the hashrate, and vote transfers are likely to be charged at whatever the going rate is if detected by miners. Uncensorability may be possible using two-step commitment, but if the vote is valuable enough, the miner might forgo its fee in favor of never confirming the second commitment. It may be better to focus on libertarian solutions on top of blockchains than attempting to force democratic ideals on them.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T00:58:06.485161+00:00