The 'Dark DAO' Threat: Vote Vulnerability Could Undermine Crypto Elections

At least, that's the latest finding from Cornell University researchers Philip Daian, Tyler Kell, Ian Miers and Ari Juels, who reached the conclusion in a paper published last week on a vote manipulation scheme it termed a dark decentralized autonomous organization, or "Dark DAO.".

Describing the dark DAO as an entity set up using smart contracts, it would be undetectable, buying users votes in order to overwhelm governance systems, issue false signals or engage in market manipulation.

Projects like EOS, Tezos, Tron, Decred and Polkadot have all deployed various forms of blockchain voting in an effort to formalize decision-making on their software.

Others seek to overcome the governance hurdles faced by major blockchains by allowing stakeholders to vote on technical changes - or what Tezos calls a "Self-amending crypto ledger."

While some of these projects have already hit roadblocks in their experimentation, according to the Cornell researchers, a dark DAO could cause havoc in a way that surpasses what's happened in the past.

According to the paper, a dark DAO works by essentially dominating voter participation, which is especially disconcerting since many of these votes have suffered from low turnout.

The researchers also detail a bribery attack that could be committed against ethereum's signaling tool, called Carbon Vote.

While Jake Yocom-Piatt from Decred acknowledges that these kinds of attacks stand to be highly problematic in the future, the issue is one for both systems that deploy both on-chain and off-chain voting mechanisms.

He told CoinDesk: "It is difficult to defend against vote buying, and it is currently an open research topic how to best defend against it."

Daian said, "I would strongly caution against direct reliance on any voting scheme vulnerable to vote buying or coercion in decision making."