This research proposes a novel method for ensuring fair governance of a common resource recorded on a blockchain. It features a self-governing system of stakeholders, managing resources by taking on the roles of auditors and claimants in place of having an overseeing bureaucracy with its accompanying overhead costs. While self-governing can be subject to fraud and collusion, in the proposed governance system, anonymity, a staple of blockchain transactions, is utilized to mitigate these negative effects. This is done by assigning random anonymous auditors to resource claimants. Cheating, along with improper auditing, will result in penalties for both auditor and claimant. Improper auditing consists not only of allowing unlawful resource use but also denying lawful use. The proposed system is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) running on a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. All activities are recorded as immutable public transactions on the blockchain. A simulation and a blockchain game to support the plausibility of the model are presented.
resource governance; blockchain; distributed application; anonymity; Hyperledger