The Cosmos ecosystem has long sought to address the challenge of ensuring privacy in governance voting while maintaining transparency and integrity. To tackle this issue, AADAO has awarded a $130,000 grant to Fairblock for the development of “pre-execution privacy” for governance voting.
This innovative system will enable validators and users to keep their votes confidential until the voting deadline using distributed key generation and identity-based encryption. Votes will be encrypted and automatically decrypted after the deadline, ensuring privacy without impacting user experience. The process will involve encrypting transactions, having Cosmos Hub validators finalize the order, and FairBlock validators sharing a block key for decryption and execution.
By implementing private governance, the system aims to ensure pre-voting information symmetry and increase censorship resistance. This approach is designed to minimize voter misbehavior and social media influence on governance proposals, preventing early vote swaying and last-minute manipulations by whales. Private voting contributes to fairer outcomes, reduces bias, and allows for shorter voting periods, leading to more efficient and unbiased governance. Ultimately improving voting quality, foster higher voter turnout, and ensure fairer outcomes.
Set grant milestones include developing the Pre-Execution Privacy (PEP) Cosmos SDK module, the FairyRing Cosmos chain, the FairyPort relayer, and cryptographic libraries (Decentralized IBE, VSS, and DKG), as well as an audit by Oak Security. The team will also focus on the development of a Private Governance Cosmos SDK module, as well as the development of a frontend JavaScript library for encrypting transactions. These advancements are set to further enhance user protection and improve the governance experience in the Cosmos ecosystem.
