Reducing the power of the pivotal voter (Kiwi design proposal)

The author, Tim Daub, proposes a pragmatic scheme to reduce the power of "pivotal voters" in a future Kiwi writers contest, after a prior contest's prize places 3 and 4 were separated by only two upvotes. The proposal has Tim and Mac secretly pick a contest end time, publish a keccak256 hash of it with a random salt, announce only a rough end window, and reveal the input afterward so participants can verify the commitment. The article admits this fails the insider attack test, since Tim and Mac could still vote pivotally right before the secret end time. A possible future improvement would tie the end to a public condition neither organizers nor writers control, such as the first Ethereum L1 block whose hash ends in 00.