[Cryptography] Incentive Politics

[Howard Harmon]

Hi Everyone.

For those of you that have been around a while, you may remember Jim Bell’s Assassination Politics essays from a few decades back. If so, you may be interested in the following paper we wrotethat addresses the issues Bell’s proposal has (as well as issues contained in other similar proposals). The abstract and links to the paper are pasted at the end of this email.

We are a small group of academics (some of you know us) choosing to operate under the pseudonym “Howard Harmon." We have had a lot of fun writing this paper and thinking about this problem, and have decided to share our work because we hold a strong conviction that if the “anonymous task marketplaces” we describe in our paper are implemented, then they could have a significant positive impact on society. To this end, we would greatly appreciate any thoughts or comments you may have to offer.

If any of you decide to read the paper, many of you will take issue with its lack of rigor and formalism, and especially our “hand-wavy” approach in describing the protocol we give. We are sympathetic, but decided to write it like this so that the layperson can read and understand the paper, and it is our hope that those of you annoyed by this will not miss the forest for the trees.

Paper details below.

Abstract: The existence of a marketplace for users to anonymously post large-scale tasks with an associated monetary reward, designed so the executors of the task almost certainly receive the reward while preserving anonymity, would provide humanity with remarkable new capabilities. Jim Bell proposed one solution specific for assassination marketplaces in his Assassination Politics essays, but several flaws contained in Bell's solution and others have prevented their adoption. We propose a protocol allowing for the existence of task marketplaces that can be built using smart contracts, and that rectifies the flaws contained in existing proposals. Specifically, our protocol provides a means by which participants can fund a public contract detailing some task, in a way that is trustless, decentralized, and preserves anonymity, while ensuring the executor of the task is almost certainly paid, and the task is almost certainly completed. Successfully funded and completed contracts are precisely those with significant support, thereby providing a natural defense against the proliferation of especially abhorrent or criminal contracts.

Link (LaTeX PDF): https://drive.proton.me/urls/0SBN8VX9J4#EvyJhiqdlecb (let us know if there are better places to post this PDF).

Bitcoin forum discussion: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5468699.new#new

Medium post:https://medium.com/@howardharmon/incentive-politics-and-a-solution-to-the-hitman-problem-857175848ef

Regards,

Howard Harmon
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