Blockchain-based Mechanism Design for Collaborative Mathematical Research

Scientific research, and particularly research in mathematics, is arguably one of the crowning achievements of our collective human intellect. Its creation increasingly requires collaboration between multiple researchers with different and sometimes complementary backgrounds. On the other hand, its verification requires a careful matching between the expertise of reviewers and authors. Unfortunately, errors do happen and sometimes are only corrected many years after they appear in print, if at all. Nevertheless, at least when it comes to mathematical research, computer-verified formal proofs are possible as a final arbiter of mathematical truth, however, they are hard to produce even for relatively simple statements. Hence, such approaches typically lack far behind the current research frontier. In our work we present a novel blockchain-based system to tackle such issues. We discuss how the use of a combination of existing technologies such as decentralized file storage, review systems, smart contracts, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and proof assistants can speed up and improve the quality and collaboration of mathematical research. As a proof of concept, we also design a mechanism to incentivize collaborative work and credit sharing that encourages provers to share their partial progresses without delay. Simultaneously, our mechanism incentivizes expert reviewers to challenge publicized proofs with formal proofs enabling dispute resolution, if needed.