The governance technology for blockchain systems: a survey

doi:10.1007/s11704-023-3113-x

Front. Comput. Sci.

2024, Vol. 18

Issue (2) : 182813 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-023-3113-x

Information Security

The governance technology for blockchain systems: a survey

Guocheng ZHU¹, Debiao HE^1,²(

), Haoyang AN¹, Min LUO¹, Cong PENG¹

¹. School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
². Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Computer Networks, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250014, China

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Abstract

After the Ethereum DAO attack in 2016, which resulted in significant economic losses, blockchain governance has become a prominent research area. However, there is a lack of comprehensive and systematic literature review on blockchain governance. To deeply understand the process of blockchain governance and provide guidance for the future design of the blockchain governance model, we provide an in-depth review of blockchain governance. In this paper, first we introduce the consensus algorithms currently used in blockchain and relate them to governance theory. Second, we present the main content of off-chain governance and investigate two well-known off-chain governance projects. Third, we investigate four common on-chain governance voting techniques, then summarize the seven attributes that the on-chain governance voting process should meet, and finally analyze four well-known on-chain governance blockchain projects based on the previous research. We hope this survey will provide an in-depth insight into the potential development direction of blockchain governance and device future research agenda.

Keywords blockchain governance off-chain governance on-chain governance voting

Corresponding Author(s): Debiao HE

About author:

Peng Lei and Charity Ngina Mwangi contributed equally to this work.

Just Accepted Date: 02 August 2023 Issue Date: 17 November 2023

Cite this article:

Guocheng ZHU,Debiao HE,Haoyang AN, et al. The governance technology for blockchain systems: a survey[J]. Front. Comput. Sci., 2024, 18(2): 182813.

URL:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fcs/EN/10.1007/s11704-023-3113-x
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fcs/EN/Y2024/V18/I2/182813

Notation	Description
IoT	Internet of Things
Segwit	Segregated Witness
BCH	BitcoinCash
BTC	Bitcoin
PoW	Proof of Work
PoS	Proof of Stake
PoA	Proof of Activity
PoSe	Proof of Service
DKG	Distributed key generation
DPoS	Delegated Proof of Stake
LPoS	Liquid Proof of Stake
TPS	Transaction Per Second
EIP	Ethereum Improvement Proposal
DKG	Distributed Key Generation
CSUG	A cryptocurrency system under governance
$C S i, i = 1, …, n$	The ith well-established cryptocurrency system
$G C i, i = 1, …, m$	The ith governance smart contract on $C S U G$
$V G i, i = 1, …, n$	The voting group on $C S i$ that holds tokens of $C S U G$
$R C i, j, i = 1, …, n, j = 1, …, m$	The registration smart contract on $C S i$ for the voting choices in the governance smart contract $G C i$
$V C i, j, i = 1, …, n, j = 1, …, m$	The voting smart contract on $C S i$ for the governance smart contract $G C j$
$C S C i, i = 1, …, n$	The light client of $C S i$
$V C R$	The vote counting routine
$C G$	The consensus group of $C S U G$
$G P R$	The governance proposal registry

Tab.1 The symbols used in this paper

Fig.1 The structure of blockchain

Fig.2 Hard fork and soft fork

Tab.2 The government type of cryptocurrency

Tab.3 The comparison for four governance voting methods

Fig.3 Proxy voting

Fig.4 Quartic voting

Fig.5 Cross-chain voting

Fig.6 Token-lock voting

Fig.7 EIP category

Fig.8 The attributes of voting in on-chain governance

Fig.9 The framework of MULTAV

Fig.10 Dash governance process

Tab.4 The comparison about three governance methods

Fig.11 Decred governance model

Tab.5 The analysis of four on-chain governance blockchain

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