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Crypto-governance with karma
The revolutionary appeal of cryptocurrencies and the underlying distributed ledgers is that no one owns them. They are highly democratic systems (at least in principle): the community sets the rules of the ledger and maintains it. This has the unique feature of being highly dynamic and adaptable to the latest greatest in technology and societal needs. But to fully deliver on their appeal, distributed ledgers must employ a fair and efficient mechanism for self-governance. Should a ledger change its protocol, e.g., from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake? How should a newly identified bug be resolved? Many distributed ledgers have adopted voting-like mechanisms for this purpose, but crucially, voting rights are associated with the amount of tokens owned, and as a direct consequence, with the wealth of the users, contradicting the most basic principles of democracy. However, unlike in classical political decisions, crypto-governance decisions are highly dynamic and frequent - they almost occur in real-time. This makes them especially suited for a karma economy, which has been recently demonstrated to achieve highly fair and efficient outcomes in repetitive settings in a completely non-monetary manner.
A major challenge in incorporating a money-free karma system into a monetary crypto-system will be the distributed accounting of karma, and the robustness to so-called Sybil attacks where anonymous users create new accounts to gain karma. Most importantly, how can a solution be derived that is resistant to Sybil attacks whilst retaining some level of decentralisation? With this in mind, your task will be to a) review the state of the art in crypto-governance, b) understand the current karma mechanism, c) develop a tractable game-theoretical formulation for a karma-based crypto-voting scheme, d) demonstrate the efficacy of your approach in simulation experiments, e) identify and devise countermeasures for vulnerabilities such as sybil attacks, and e) (optional) implement and showcase your solution on a real blockchain.
A major challenge in incorporating a money-free karma system into a monetary crypto-system will be the distributed accounting of karma, and the robustness to so-called Sybil attacks where anonymous users create new accounts to gain karma. Most importantly, how can a solution be derived that is resistant to Sybil attacks whilst retaining some level of decentralisation? With this in mind, your task will be to a) review the state of the art in crypto-governance, b) understand the current karma mechanism, c) develop a tractable game-theoretical formulation for a karma-based crypto-voting scheme, d) demonstrate the efficacy of your approach in simulation experiments, e) identify and devise countermeasures for vulnerabilities such as sybil attacks, and e) (optional) implement and showcase your solution on a real blockchain.
Not specified
Please apply directly to the posting on SiROP. We look forward to your application.
Ezzat Elokda (elokdae@ethz.ch), Aida Manzano Kharman (aida.manzano-kharman17@imperial.ac.uk)
Please apply directly to the posting on SiROP. We look forward to your application. Ezzat Elokda (elokdae@ethz.ch), Aida Manzano Kharman (aida.manzano-kharman17@imperial.ac.uk)
IFA-Imperial-crypto-governance-with-karma.pdf
