Guys, I’ve been trying to come up with a solution that could partially mitigate the impact of GPT cheating. It’s obvious that right now there’s a serious imbalance between the cost of cheating and the cost of anti-cheating measures, and this cannot last forever. My proposal focuses on:

Increasing the cost of cheating.

Increasing the benefits of anti-cheating.

Reducing the impact of cheating.

Before diving in, let me briefly introduce the two major models in the blockchain world: POW and POS. POW was introduced by Bitcoin, relying on something like “computational power voting” to determine the validity of transactions. This requires maintaining more than 51% of the computational power on the side of the honest participants, which comes at a huge cost. POS, on the other hand, introduces validator nodes, each of which must stake a significant amount of tokens. If they are caught producing malicious or false information, their stake is slashed. This makes the cost of malicious actions much higher. At the same time, these stakers need rewards, so POS currencies tend to inflate and distribute newly minted tokens to validators.

Now, let’s propose a Codeforces Token. Player accounts can voluntarily stake a small amount of tokens (say, $10) to enter a “staked” state. We can treat staked players as competing in rated contests. If they are caught cheating, part of their staked tokens will be slashed. Unstaked players can still participate, but they will only get a Virtual Rating. This rating is calculated based on the results of staked players and only affects their virtual rating changes. The results of unstaked players will not affect the ratings of staked players.

This way, we can essentially ignore anti-cheating checks for unstaked players (who are often just mass-created accounts), because they don’t affect fairness. At the same time, we don’t restrict anyone’s right to participate in contests. Additionally, special Codeforces platform rewards (such as CodeTON, 20xx is NEAR, etc.) would only be distributed to staked users.

A user might choose to purchase tokens and stake them for the following reasons:

They want their rating to be officially backed by Codeforces.

They want to support the Codeforces platform.

They want to earn contest rewards.

Regardless of motivation, when a player decides to retire, they can sell their tokens, bearing only the cost of market price fluctuations. Codeforces could even distribute enough tokens for staking to all accounts registered for at least one year, so no one actually has to pay upfront.

The Codeforces Token could also be inflationary. After each contest, new tokens are minted. Staked players can rate the contest: an upvote will direct the newly minted tokens to the contest organizer, while a downvote will burn them. This incentivizes organizers to hold better contests.

What do you think? I truly believe in this idea. If such a token really existed, I personally would buy $1000.