Reputable List Curation from Decentralized Voting
Authors: Elizabeth C. Crites (University College London), Mary Maller (Ethereum Foundation), Sarah Meiklejohn (University College London and IC3), Rebekah Mercer (O(1) Labs)
Volume: 2020
Issue: 4
Pages: 297–320
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2020-0074
Abstract: Token-curated registries (TCRs) are a mechanism by which a set of users are able to jointly curate a reputable list about real-world information. Entries in the registry may have any form, so this primitive has been proposed for use — and deployed — in a variety of decentralized applications, ranging from the simple joint creation of lists to helping to prevent the spread of misinformation online. Despite this interest, the security of this primitive is not well understood, and indeed existing constructions do not achieve strong or provable notions of security or privacy. In this paper, we provide a formal cryptographic treatment of TCRs as well as a construction that provably hides the votes cast by individual curators. Along the way, we provide a model and proof of security for an underlying voting scheme, which may be of independent interest. We also demonstrate, via an implementation and evaluation, that our construction is practical enough to be deployed even on a constrained decentralized platform like Ethereum.
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