1/ Token curation markets use economic incentives to create crowd curated information feeds/lists on any topic. Feels like what will become an important crypto primitive: medium.com/@simondlr/intr…
2/ Core idea: the token holders of the feed have an incentive to create the best feed possible to attract as much attention as possible. More attention --> more valuable feed tokens because of their value to others who want their content in the feed.
3/ A lot of life comes down to effective information processing. Specifically, creating ranked lists. They are the root of decision making: consider options, rank them, take action. Curation markets can do this on an arbitrary number of topics. Potential scope is huge.
4a/ Mechanics: token holders get to vote on/stake the content of a feed in proportion to the amount of tokens they own. A smart contract acts as the central bank for the feed's tokens. Tokens are purchased for ETH from the contract and are stored in a treasury.
4b/ The central bank has an algorithmic monetary policy. Tokens get more expensive as more are created. Anyone can sell their stake back to the smart contract for ETH at current rates at any time, ETH returned comes from the treasury.
4c/ For example, if the monetary policy algorithm is "increase the price by 1 ETH per token outstanding", 1st token can be bought for 1 ETH, the 10th token for 10 ETH. If I'm the 5th person in I buy for 5 ETH, if community grows to 100 I can sell back to the contract for 100 ETH.
5/ Applications:
- Decentralized reddit
- Social applications with multiple competing news feeds
- Setting priorities for a blockchain protocol in decentralized governance
- Custom-tailored lists for every individual on any topic. Recommender systems/AI compete for you.
- Decentralized reddit
- Social applications with multiple competing news feeds
- Setting priorities for a blockchain protocol in decentralized governance
- Custom-tailored lists for every individual on any topic. Recommender systems/AI compete for you.
6a/ Challenges:
- Tragedy of the commons. How do you get people to be put work into curation beyond their vested interest in seeing their tokens go up? Likely answer: reward those who curate first/early. See "Freshness Bonus": docs.google.com/document/d/1Wt…
- Tragedy of the commons. How do you get people to be put work into curation beyond their vested interest in seeing their tokens go up? Likely answer: reward those who curate first/early. See "Freshness Bonus": docs.google.com/document/d/1Wt…
6b/ - Feed takeover. What if someone buys a bunch of tokens to advertise irrelevant content? Likely answer: they'd destroy the value of what they just bought, making such an attack less likely. Could also require further staking.
7/ More complicated mechanisms can be layered on top, including voting systems to approve/deny new members to join a community (Token Curated Registries), different formulas for monetary policies, and incentives to hold tokens for longer.
8a/ Implications:
- Curation Markets provide a way to directly bet on algorithms. Since a lot of curators will be algorithms and people will seek returns from staking, they'll delegate their stakes to the best performing algorithms.
- Curation Markets provide a way to directly bet on algorithms. Since a lot of curators will be algorithms and people will seek returns from staking, they'll delegate their stakes to the best performing algorithms.
8b/ - Curation Markets also provide a way to earn money directly by writing algorithms. Built the best niche news aggregation algorithm? The best algorithm to make predictions from sensor data? You'll earn outsized returns from the staking game.
8c/ The result is an explosion in an open market for micro algorithmic curation hedge funds. And from another angle: a way to directly monetize AI.
