André Diamond

GM @Cardano, Sunday musings. ☕️🍪 Have you caught wind of how @Catalyst_onX and our partners are revolutionizing cryptography, especially in decision-making? We are diving into quadratic and other advanced methods to tackle the skewed impact of certain voters in shaping consensus. It's been a firm commitment ever since we've laid out the plan in front of the community in Fund11. The roadmap is clear. Tho easy to miss, right? 🧭 It's a busy and noisy place. Catalyst handles numerous key initiatives, each zeroing in on different program facets. You probably know the day to day buzz around live voting rounds, or perhaps you follow the meticulous management of grantee projects as they progress via milestone based funding with community oversight. But there's A LOT more - as our team is focused on the future building diligently in the trenches: ⚙️ - constantly enhancing the state-of-the-art tech stack for daily operations with focus on advancing user experience and broader tooling - preparing the ground for the most dramatic upgrade in Catalyst history to take place throughout 2025 - as legacy tech stack will start being gradually deprecated and replaced by new modules one by one [starting with infamous ideascale], but also 🗳️ - team has been pioneering cryptographic protocol research that promises significant industry leaps and tackles real-world challenges, especially in the realm of consensus and decision making/voting. See, Catalyst isn't just about where it stands - it's about where it's going next. And how we continue unlocking new opportunity for people to bring their ideas to life and maintain agency in the process of doing so. We're channeling every bit of our knowledge and experience to supercharge the Catalyst program, paving the way for meaningful improvements and setting an example for industry peers to follow. The groundwork has been laid out and we're making solid progress on that front. Through a dynamic partnership with the IOG Research and Photrek teams, we've spent this past year delving into groundbreaking possibilities for alternative voting protocols within Catalyst. This project is not just progressing - it's already revealing exciting potential. 👌 In recent research outputs, this team dove into five different approaches to quadratic voting from academic studies and decided to focus on two key types for a closer look. A formal model was created to break down the various voting types and stages involved in the process. [you can check the milestone link in reply for deep dives] 🔗 One of the discoveries points out that the well-known quadratic voting scheme has vulnerabilities to collusion attacks, pointing to some important areas for improvement. Not unsurprising outcome. The team also identified and proved several key properties of quadratic voting, strengthening the overall understanding of how it works. Additionally, a generalization of quadratic voting was proposed that keeps all its essential features intact. A formal model for the Gini coefficient was developed, complete with proofs that add depth to the findings. A major takeaway from this work is the pressing need for privacy-preserving voting schemes in quadratic voting systems. The team also took the time to correct some errors found in previously published papers, which helps maintain the integrity of the field. You can check out a draft protocol that meets the acceptance criteria for Milestone 3! Link in the reply. 🤩 This is exciting because as such - the protocol outlines how to build a privacy-preserving cryptographic voting system for quadratic voting, as thoroughly analyzed in our report. The document provides a detailed description of this draft, including its different parameterizations and potential future developments that could lead to a family of protocols focused on privacy in voting. Here are some key features of the draft protocol ... let's highlight some of them. 👉 works well with both quadratic voting schemes and their generalizations. 👉 ensures ballot privacy, which is crucial for fairness among all participants. 👉 retains all the properties of existing privacy-preserving voting protocols already used in Catalyst. 👉 balances privacy with verifiability, allowing voters to split their stakes across multiple ballots. 👉 supports delegation alongside quadratic voting and its generalizations. The protocol runs efficiently, with complexity that’s linear compared to current privacy-preserving protocols in Catalyst. The report also includes a basic mathematical model for the protocol, explaining the terms used and outlining the main stages involved. There are also some practical elements that we're working towards, that the new Catalyst stack is going to enable - such as global state snapshots allowing ad hoc participation (tentative target F15), or post tally logic adjustments that are in final mile preparations ahead of the next rounds. Tho we'll be sharing more once we solidify the frameworks ahead of implementations. Lots of moving pieces - can spend days on it as it's promising good outcomes based on our current progress. But still work to be left. One thing is certain - we're locked in on the mission and not afraid to take on challenging aspects. Let's build tooling that empowers people with purpose. Thanks for being here with us. The journey continues. 💙