I've been designing a next-gen blockchain platform and made some controversial
choices. Looking for honest feedback from the crypto community.
## Core Design Principles:
**What's DIFFERENT:**
- ❌ No blocks (individual transaction propagation)
- ❌ No mining (Byzantine consensus via random node verification)
- ❌ No cryptocurrency tokens (zero economic incentives)
- ✅ Quantum-resistant signatures (future-proof cryptography)
- ✅ ONE account per human (enforced for democracy)
- ✅ Direct democracy governance (citizens vote on platform changes)
**The Goal:** Create a social/governance platform where 5 billion humans can
participate in direct democracy with true "one person, one vote" - no plutocracy,
no mining pools controlling consensus, no whales manipulating votes with tokens.
## The Trade-offs I'm Wrestling With:
### 1. **Privacy vs Accountability**
To prevent vote manipulation, all transactions are PUBLIC (like Bitcoin).
You get a pseudonymous username, but your voting history is transparent.
- **Pro:** No secret vote buying, provable democratic consensus
- **Con:** Your political views are permanently public
**Question:** Is radical transparency worth the privacy loss? Or does this
create a surveillance dystopia?
### 2. **One Account Per Person**
To achieve "one person one vote," I enforce ONE identity per human. You can't
create multiple accounts to spam votes.
- **Pro:** Prevents Sybil attacks, enables true democracy
- **Con:** Can't separate work/personal identities, no "burner accounts"
**Question:** Is enforcing single identity too authoritarian? Or necessary
for democratic integrity?
### 3. **Permanent Immutability**
Once you post something, it's permanent. Forever. No edits, no deletions.
- **Pro:** Historical truth preserved, no censorship or revisionism
- **Con:** Youthful mistakes haunt you forever, violates GDPR "right to be forgotten"
**Question:** Should people have the right to erase their past? Or does
democracy require permanent accountability?
### 4. **No Economic Incentives**
Nodes run altruistically (like Wikipedia editors or Tor volunteers). No mining
rewards, no staking yields, no token speculation.
- **Pro:** Pure democratic participation, no profit motive corrupting governance
- **Con:** Will people actually run nodes without financial gain?
**Question:** Can a blockchain survive without economic incentives? Or am I
being naive about human nature?
## What I'm NOT Building:
- Not a DeFi platform (no smart contracts)
- Not a currency (no tokens to trade)
- Not a corporate project (open-source, community-governed)
- Not trying to compete with Bitcoin/Ethereum (different purpose entirely)
## What I AM Building:
A democratic social network where:
- Governments can't censor you
- Corporations can't ban you
- Wealthy users can't buy more influence
- Your vote counts exactly as much as anyone else's
## My Questions For You:
1. **Privacy:** Would you use a platform where your votes are public forever?
2. **Identity:** Is "one account per person" too restrictive?
3. **Incentives:** Would you run a node altruistically (costs ~$50/month)?
4. **Governance:** Would you trust direct democracy over representative democracy?
I know this sounds idealistic. Maybe too idealistic. But I'm genuinely curious
if there's a community that wants this, or if I'm solving a problem nobody has.
**Honest criticism welcome.** Tell me why this will fail. I want to stress-test
these ideas before building something nobody wants.
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**TL;DR:** Building a blockchain with no blocks, no mining, no coins - just
direct democracy and radical transparency. Is this revolutionary or just naive?