# kaal:claim:3125822-013

**Claim.** The tragedy of the commons arises in any system lacking a well designed incentive structure; in blockchain proof of stake design this is the nothing at stake problem, where unregulated systems lead pseudonymous users to abuse the system.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** asserted

**Holds when.**

- systems without well designed incentive structures
- pseudonymous participation

**Source quote.**

> Similarly, the tragedy of the commons occurs in any system which does not have well designed incentive structure. This is called the "nothing at stake" problem in blockchain proof of stake design, where unregulated systems lead pseudonymous users to abuse the system.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Vlad Andrei, *Blockchain Infrastructure for Measuring Domain Specific Reputation in Autonomous Decentralized and A* (2018), 4.1.2 Tyranny of the majority and tragedy of the commons problems, page 13

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Vlad Andrei, Blockchain Infrastructure for Measuring Domain Specific Reputation in Autonomous Decentralized and A (2018). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3125822

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `d4d0bbaa3260968226186131d60e6d64a53e904d94e4295c61fd17042f1191ef` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20et%20al.%20-%202018%20-%20Blockchain%20Infrastructure%20for%20Measuring%20Domain%20Specific%20Reputation%20in%20Autonomous%20Decentralized%20and%20A.pdf

**Failure mode.** nothing at stake  (family: staking-and-incentive-misalignment)

**Topics.** institutional-design, consensus-and-security, risk-and-incentives

**Keywords.** tragedy-of-the-commons, nothing-at-stake, proof-of-stake, incentive-design

**Related claims.**

- generalizes: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782198-010
- extended_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3125827-003
- extended_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782210-014

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.