# The Computer Scientist Who Boosts Privacy With Entropy | Quanta Magazine
## About
- Author: Steve Nadis
- Title: The Computer Scientist Who Boosts Privacy With Entropy | Quanta Magazine
- Tags: #articles #science
- URL: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-computer-scientist-who-boosts-privacy-with-entropy-20221018/
## Highlights
**How does that work in practice?**
First there are the people who use their own computers (running software that we design) to do the mixing. Then there are the people who monitor the system and, in a sense, bet on the mixers, literally putting money down to say that they think this particular mixnode will be successful. Success in this case means doing a good job of mixing, which relates both to not dropping packets and throughput — how many packets are going in and how many mixed packets are going out. People who vote on the best mixnodes get some of the money, but most of it goes to the people who actually run the mixnodes. Payment comes in the form of cryptocurrency, which has the advantage of decentralization. No single person or company is writing checks or wiring money. Instead, it’s all done automatically, making use of algorithms that we invented.
Moreover, the system is designed to maintain decentralization and prevent the rich from getting richer. When one mixnode becomes too popular, the people who vote for it will make less money. It’s in their interest to find new mixnodes that are not “saturated” but still offer high-quality performance. That’s how we promote decentralization.
A [new paper](https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/reward-sharing-for-mixnets) that came out in June shows that this approach can lead to an economically sustainable mixnet. Drawing on ideas from game theory, my colleagues Claudia Diaz and Aggelos Kiayias and I showed that we can maintain Nash equilibrium (in a single,“one-shot” game), which basically means there is no incentive to cheat or game the system. We then showed, via simulations, that the system is sustainable (in an “iterative” game), even if the players are not perfectly rational and the mixing is repeated over and over again. Everyone gains by playing by the rules, whether you are doing the mixing or voting for a particular mixer who you think will do a good job.
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