Bitcoin Forum

BitPools (http://www.bitpools.com) is a way to pool your bitcoins with other people to solve a problem, using the Bitcoin blockchain to vote on a solution.


Let me know what you think.

This is and always was an outstanding idea, if ahead of its time.
I'm annoyed - you won't be needing my services.

Think you can apply it to online voting for elections
Can see poll stations finally becoming legacy items

very interesting...

why not voting outside the cryptoworld, like elections :)

some sidechain project might solve that too i guess..

Well I saw a few projects around that idea but not to scale
Thinking that this could be put to scale perhaps with a tinker or two

BitPools is more about empowering people instead of giving power to another entity through a majority vote.

I can see the need for polling station finally becoming legacy items.

what kind of entity you mean?

By giving people the tool to vote this way, you sort of empower them anyway, regardless of the subject they vote on :)

BitPools allows you to vote with your bitcoins. Instead of an entity that would take your money and then allow you to vote for the person that gets to spend it.

Thanks for clarifying looks like a neat project regardless, a distributed voting system using Bitcoin based tech

Yah polling stations becoming legacy items would impact voter participation in interesting ways no real excuse not to be a bit engaged other than protest, bring the digital age to elections.

Still I wish you the best of luck with your project and it looks interesting to me can see it makes sense for group buys
Think the MSC protocol has similar technical aspects as seen in the Maidsafe IPO but this is convenient for smaller scale distributions

Would have saved a heck of a lot of time for manual sends on the BTC side of that IPO if something like this was set up there though :)

Ya, there have been a lot of projects that would have benefited a lot from this...anyone that wants a project with a lot of people funding a single goal.

At least now it will be available.

Signing  up is very easy, I value the ability to be anonymous so no e-mail is required. Just a username and password.

This is great!  Does the amount pledged decide the 'weight' of the vote?  Otherwise people could make many tiny donations to get more votes and game the system.

When there is a proposal, the person creating the proposal sets the minimum vote amount (ie 100 mBTC) and either a goal amount (ie 1000 mBTC) or a percentage of pool members (ie 50%).

If you wanted, you could certainly vote several times (and I plan on making that simpler than creating separate accounts) but all you are doing is spending more money. But this could be desirable if you were voting on creating a new company and you wanted more "shares" of the company (ie Creating a Bitcoin Video game company, etc).

I really really love this idea, because I always question the validity of votes and elections.   There is literally no accountability for elections right now...

This is a great idea!

Clever idea.  I very much look forward to trying this service. 

Technical Question where would I place a voting mechanism
Thinking Uses the Bitcoin Network and Uses the Bitcoin Currency so internal mechanism for Bitcoin
Which is neat since Bitcoin needs its own mechanism to do this  ;)
http://s29.postimg.org/94m9iu5g7/4chart.png (http://postimage.org/)

Bottom left, uses the Bitcoin Network and the Bitcoin Currency.

That is the great thing about BitPools, it uses the most secure ledger in the world to store the votes which are both transparent and anonymous.

No changes to the Bitcoin core needed, from the ground up everything is built around the advantages of the blockchain technology.

How would you restrict votes to one per person? Or is this supposed to work like kickstarter?

EDIT:nevermind, i watched the video and it does appear to work like kickstarter

Thanks for clarifying I was having a bit of conflict in classifying it since it has applications that seem similar to sidechains but not entirely
It could be developed to use the bitcoin currency but independent of the network
That said since bitpools uses Bitcoin and is based on Bitcoin as a currency it should be in the Bitcoin category which means it needs a sublevel :)

Was reading up on sidechains a bit so it was why I was a bit confused particularly the paragraph below. That said it uses the main chain as the voting mechanism so cleared my own confusion on it.

Sidechains enable new features to be added to the bitcoin blockchain by interacting with Bitcoin.

It’s possible to bring all of these features to Bitcoin by using a two-way peg system. This means you could move your bitcoins from the original blockchain to a new sidechain in order to gain the added features of that sidechain without having to switch into a completely new currency. For example, you may have your savings in cold storage on the original Bitcoin blockchain, but it could make sense to pay for your morning coffee on a sidechain that focuses on enabling microtransactions. Bitcoins retain their original value on each one of the sidechains, and this system also preserves the idea of having a hard limit on 21 million bitcoins that can be sent through all of the different sidechains rather than inflating the total number of cryptocoins with each new feature, (Interpretation) another example of this is building voting systems that rely on the Bitcoin Blockchain and its security using the cryptography of the network to solve a problem, using the Bitcoin blockchain to vote on a solution but keeping the hard limit of 21 million bitcoins.
So could see a line there based on the interpretation since the hard limit is kept, but I agree with your point.

From the Adam beck article
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/adam-back-sidechains-can-replace-altcoins-bitcoin-2-0-platforms/2014/04/10

It is sort of like kickstarter but in reverse.

On kickstarter someone with an idea posts the proposal and tries to get people to fund his project.

On BitPools people with a problem pledge their bitcoins toward that problem, then people with ideas and the ability to provide the solution posts the proposal.

Then people vote on whichever idea they like the most.

There is also the implementation of Dominant Assurance Contracts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract) where an incentive is given to the voters, if the vote fails then those that voted for the proposal will split the incentive. This encourages people to vote if they support the proposal even if they believe the proposal might fail.

I believe many things can be done using the bitcoin blockchain without the need for sidechains. There is a lot that to it that nobody has implemented.

Wouldn't an anonymous system be open to fraud? There is no barrier to anyone producing millions of bitcoin addresses and voting for their own idea and then running off with the coin.

This is a good idea but it doesn't seem to scale well.

With BitPools you vote with your bitcoins. If someone creates a proposal and someone else creates millions of bitcoin addresses and fills each address with the minimum vote amount (ie. 10 mBTC) and sends their bitcoins...what would they gain?

It is built to scale quite a bit.

These two people could be colluding like how politicians and companies collude to have certain contracts handed to a specific company...
Also someone who creates a proposal could then vote for themselves, surely that invalidates the integrity of the system?
Since the vote amounts are being refunded, it doesn't cost anything to rig a vote.

A fully fleshed out example:
Problem is proposed
People make pledges
Person A bribes Person B to propose a solution that will use Person A's business/company/services
Person B proposes solution
Person A wants Person B's solution to win so makes a lot of fake votes thus crushing the other solutions
Vote fees are returned and Person A witnesses improved business at little to no cost
Some people cry foul play but because the votes are anonymous you can't deny the results because there would be no explicit evidence.

If I have correctly understood the system you have produced then this method will work 100% of the time.

What you have made is something necessary in the world but I don't think its in the best form.

It sounds like a great idea,

That is where you are mistaken. If a vote passes, it is the votes themselves that fund the proposal. They are not returned unless the vote fails.

Imagine your scenario where the problem is that a bunch of people want a video game that uses bitcoins as the in-game currency.
Video game company (Blizzard) bribes user Joe to propose a solution using Blizzard software.
Joe proposes a solution, Blizzard software will create a video game with all pledgers getting free access to the video game and a share of the profits.
For the goal of the proposal they need $450,000 (1000 BTC) for the proposal to pass. They set a minimum vote to 1 bitcoin.
Joe creates 900 accounts and votes 900 times at 1 bitcoin each vote.
100 other people like the idea and vote with 1 bitcoin as well.
The proposal passes, Blizzard gets the contract and sets about creating the video game.
Joe just spent 900 bitcoins and will get 90% of all profits delegated to the voters. All other voters will get .1% plus free access to the game.

Or Joe could have just paid Blizzard 1000 bitcoins to create the software in the first place without the need to pool his funds with other Bitcoin users.


When we talk about vote fees returned, if Joe were to create 100 accounts voting 100 times with 100 bitcoins and there are only 100 other people voting 1 bitcoin each, then the vote total is 200 bitcoins with a needed 1000 bitcoins for the proposal to pass. All users would get their bitcoins returned.

And with BitPools, the vote amount is a "minimum amount", so Joe could just use a single account to send 100 bitcoins to have the same affect. It would just be on the proposer to properly deal with differing amounts per vote.

If the vote fees fund the proposal, what is stopping Blizzard making 900 accounts and voting with 1 bitcoin in each account and then they get the money back when they win.

They could do that...they still have to produce the 1000 bitcoin video game. (that would be like paying your boss $45,000 so that he hires you for a $50,000 job)

And if the proposal includes that they will use escrow, then they do not get that money until the work is complete (or at different stages of development).