In the 1990’s, cryptographers and crypto-anarchists proposed the idea of “assassination marketplaces.” These would be marketplaces where groups could post contracts tasking the assassination of an individual for a monetary reward, with the trick that the assassination can be guaranteed payment without revealing their identity. Assassination marketplaces are one application of the more general notion of “anonymous task marketplaces,” which have myriad applications (of which many are "good"). However, up to now proposals on how to create such marketplaces have had so many flaws they were never successfully adopted.
We are a small group of academics who decided to solve the problem of constructing practical anonymous task marketplaces. In a paper titled “Incentive Politics and a Solution to the Hitman Problem” (links and abstract below), we accomplish this aim, where we detail the first practical decentralized protocol for realizing general anonymous task marketplaces.
Our work demonstrates the fact that anonymous task marketplaces are in fact feasible. Unfortunately, however, anonymous task marketplaces could cause serious issues if improperly used, especially if the cryptocurrency community and society at large are not aware of the possible ramifications. The primary dangerous use of such marketplaces is of course the construction of assassination marketplaces. While anonymous task marketplaces do have a number of legitimate uses that we believe could in fact serve humanity, the looming threat of uncontrollable assassination marketplaces is too great to blindly build these without community-wide contemplation on how to manage these to keep the tasks posted on such marketplaces "ethical."
Fortunately, as we discuss in our paper, the protocol we give is resistant to the proliferation of "common crime" being posted on such marketplaces, but this does not prevent more significant crimes from being posted. As a consequence, we would like to hear the community's feedback. Specifically, we would like to hear criticism and comments on how the protocol can be improved, and how these could be safely built, as well as ideation around applications ontop of those listed in our paper.
Paper details are below.
Abstract: The existence of a marketplace for users to anonymously post large-scale tasks with an associated monetary reward, designed so the executors of the task almost certainly receive the reward while preserving anonymity, would provide humanity with remarkable new capabilities. Jim Bell proposed one solution specific for assassination marketplaces in his
Assassination Politics essays, but several flaws contained in Bell's solution and others have prevented their adoption. We propose a protocol allowing for the existence of task marketplaces that can be built using smart contracts, and that rectifies the flaws contained in existing proposals. Specifically, our protocol provides a means by which participants can fund a public contract detailing some task, in a way that is trustless, decentralized, and preserves anonymity, while ensuring the executor of the task is almost certainly paid, and the task is almost certainly completed. Successfully funded and completed contracts are precisely those with significant support, thereby providing a natural defense against the proliferation of especially abhorrent or criminal contracts. Upon giving this protocol, we discuss possible applications and methods of preventing the use of such marketplaces for crime
Link (LaTeX typeset PDF):
https://drive.proton.me/urls/ZEK5ZVCA18#Vz7F7tkmcIgL (note Proton can sometimes take a minute to decrypt).
Medium Post (if PDF inaccessible):
https://medium.com/@howardharmon/incentive-politics-and-a-solution-to-the-hitman-problem-857175848ef-Howard Harmon
