5 ms·

You're describing a transparency log, which doesn't require a blockchain.

• HaZeust 10mo ago
  A transparency log, as I understand them, requires a centralized actor; which makes it easier to fudge numbers and introduce false participants.
  • henearkr 10mo ago
    No, because each participant can check its contribution in the log. Everybody gets a copy of a verifiable hash etc when voting, allowing voters to mathematically check their vote. The kind of knowledge allowing to design such clever algorithms is the real meaning of the word "crypto" (cryptography).
    • HaZeust 10mo ago
      I see what you're saying now, I was imagining the type of transparency log that's usually run by a single institution and audited by a few others. Even if every voter gets a hash and can check that their vote is in the log, you still have a bunch of places where a central actor can misbehave: Deciding who gets to write to the log in the first place, rate-limiting or dropping submissions, or running split-view logs in the event that there's not a ton of replication - hoping that wouldn't be the case in an election. With a (properly designed) blockchain, you at least push those assumptions into a consensus layer with many writers/validators and game-theory penalties for rewriting its history. It's still not magic; but for something like elections, I'd rather minimize the points where a single operator can tilt the playing field, which is why I was thinking "blockchain" instead of "centralized transparency log"
      • ramchip 9mo ago
        These kind of things are part of transparency log threat models, for example: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6962.html#page-24 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6962.html#page-24.
      • henearkr 9mo ago
        No, just publish the hash of the full log. No blockchain required at all. Anybody can check they are seeing the same log as others by checking the log hash.