Empirical Analysis of On-chain Voting with Smart Contracts

Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/ReportConference contributionContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Robert Muth - , Technical University of Berlin (Author)
  • Florian Tschorsch - , Technical University of Berlin (Author)

Abstract

Blockchains and smart contracts promise transparency, verifiability, and self-enforcing agreements. Against this background, novel use cases such as decentralized governance platforms that implement voting to collectively manage funds have emerged. While a number of arguments against blockchain-based voting exist, we still see a relevance. In this paper, we therefore present a quantitative analysis of the Ethereum blockchain with respect to voting. To this end, we develop a blockchain analysis toolchain that we use to analyze 3 173 smart contracts on the Ethereum Mainnet with voting functionality. We extract insights on the complexity of deployed voting methods and reveal a trend towards a centralization of funds, i.e., five smart contracts manage 98% of funds comprising more than four million USD. We additionally analyze the feasibility of on-chain voting for Ethereum as well as other well-established blockchains that are used for voting, i.e., Bitcoin and Dash.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationFC Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts (WTSC~'21)
Pages397 - 412
Number of pages16
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2021
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85115842316

Keywords

Keywords

  • Analysis, Blockchain, Smart contract, Voting