Concordit: A credit-based incentive mechanism for permissioned redactable blockchain

Malicious attacks and the introduction of illegal data put blockchains at risk, and blockchain governance is gaining increasing attention. The redactable blockchain technology has become a mainstream solution for blockchain governance. However, a low completion rate for redaction tasks limits current redactable blockchain technologies, primarily due to the absence of an effective incentive mechanism for participants. This gap underscores the urgent need for designing and implementing robust incentive mechanisms in redactable blockchains. Incentive mechanisms can motivate and guide entities to participate and perform desired behaviors through awards and punishments. This paper proposes Concordit, the first deployable credit-based incentive mechanism for redactable blockchains. Its purpose is to encourage submitters to submit legal redaction requests, modifiers to perform legal redaction operations, and verifiers to maintain the behavior consistent with the consensus algorithm. In the context of permissioned blockchains, Concordit utilizes a credit value system for awards and punishments. Additionally, we use a game theory-based mechanism to analyze and model participants’ behavior utilities in the redactable blockchain. Meanwhile, we evaluate the credibility of nodes by combining their static initial credit values and dynamic behavior-related credit values. This system prioritizes high-credibility nodes as participants, thereby enhancing the completion rate for redaction tasks. Finally, the implementation and performance evaluation of our Concordit incentive mechanism demonstrate its effectiveness and practicality.