Blockchain applications beyond the cryptocurrency casino: The Punishment not Reward blockchain architecture
Richard Banach · Concurrency and Computation Practice and Experience · 2020
Summary The Bitcoin model originated blockchain architectures and inspired their further development. Blockchain architectures are still most commonly associated with currency applications, and with financial speculation. Bitcoin's rewards forProof of Workmining became the default consensus technique for blockchains. As an alternative torewardmechanisms for blockchain maintenance, we proposepunishmentmechanisms for neglecting to maintain the blockchain (provided participants are intrinsically motivated to be beneficiaries of the blockchain application). Punishment not Reward is convincing for enterprise mission critical blockchain applications, and potential punishment mechanisms includedenial of serviceand/orrevocation of confidentiality. This obviates the need for reward via cryptocurrencies, along with their attendant volatility, insecure ecosystem, and market manipulation demerits. The privacy concerns of competing entities participating in a blockchain application areprima faciein conflict with the needs of the community to be able to inflict punishment mechanisms. Conflicts of this kind can be addressed via sophisticated cryptographic techniques such as secret sharing, multiparty computation, zero‐knowledge proofs, and so on, which play a vital role. We stress the importance of correctly balancing allapplication specificinterests in the engineering of blockchain applications, so that the mix of incentives and disincentives is stabilizing.