RE: A Decentralized CAPCHA Annonymous Proof of Brain verification
Firstly, not all bots that perform actions onchain are bad. I believe that only voting, and posting operations would need CAPTCHAs to achieve your goals. Bots can’t do much harm in the internal market (but they can increase the price). Perhaps low-value transfers should also be CAPTCHAed, to stop memo spam.
These changes can have some unintended consequences:
- Automated refunds from services (e.g. sent too much to a voting bot) won’t be able to function
- Exchanges won’t be able to function
- Curation trails won’t be able to work
- People with worse browsers may not be able to use Steem
Also, depending on the implementation, this could also just result in witnesses all using the same CAPTCHA solution, which would effectively centralize Steem. Most witnesses aren’t in a position to write a CAPTCHA solution. Also, this would make it very easy for witnesses to deny certain users from posting, under the guise of them failing CAPTCHAs. Also, witness servers being down would cause a lot more problems. Also, even if just one witness server is compromised, the whole CAPTCHA system could be bypassed. (Assuming this is implemented as witness soft-forming against actions without a CAPTCHA)
Edit: Also, paying people to solve CAPTCHAs might be a workaround for bots.
Nice counter argument! Real world scenarios, too. I don't know what the answer is, but with a thousand paper cuts, we might find a solution.
An excellent analysis of the issue! Thanks so much for your input @smitop!
For fairness to all users, my feeling is that the CAPCHA should be used to identify and thereby further incentivise carbon based proof of brain upvoting/downvoting.
An option to circumvent the CAPCHA should be available (perhaps in the accounts' settings) yet the rewards generated via non-proof of brain upvotes should be less than if the CAPCHA were used.
With such an approach my feeling is that many of the unintended consequences which you mention would not become issues.
You cover some great brainstorming in the final paragraph.
Again, my thanks for your feedback, @smitop!