Thinking Through Creator Reputation Token
Date: November 2022
I am still throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks, I hope this piece is more precise than my past one above.
Follow up on Next Steps
I was developing some system diagrams for an Appointed Board and just ended up creating a Gnosis Safe and practiced its different user flows on a testnet. I assume we are all familiar with Gnosis Safe and Snapshot, I shouldn't need to re-describe how they work. I am down to record a video showcasing all their features if anyone is interested. Gnosis Safe and Snapshot among others are both really good at what they do, and I don't see any reason to rewrite some perfectly audited solidity smart contracts managing real assets unless we want our own contracts to port over to something like uqbar or Cardano. If you are worried about layer 2 stuff, both Snapshot and Gnosis Safe either are already deploy on them or are getting close to. Plus both systems, and Aragon, allow extensions. I don't see why we can't just develop Urbit frontends for these existing systems or redeploy the contracts ourselves. Scoping out an extension for a DAO framework and writing it in solidity, that is something I am interested in doing. If you have something else in mind, please let me know. I have a proposal for a Token Bonding Curve module below I am interested in developing in solidity, but please read everything in between.
I still have not gotten to the step where I am researching reference specifications like Substrate Pallets but what is described below should be specific enough to fit into a rough spec.
POC Ideating
Is federated cryptographic reddit where the gates to enter are owning a planet and signing something using a EVM wallet useful? Reddit, like facebook, tumblr, and myspace used to be interesting places before they experienced ethernal september. Can we create a feature parity social network to big tech, and if eternal september ever occours have regulations in place to deal with the externalities? Well, let me walk you through something I would be interested in building to solve that problem.
What if all planets were attached to an Ethereum Address, or NFT's such as ENS Names. It would be very interesting to see urbit names showing up in ENS the same way they show up all over twitter. I am aware that many planets have migrated to L2 making urbit independent of Ethereum, but I think a bridge back to EVM blockchains for urbit users to use dapps would be valuable. In order to implement this one planet one vote system, we would require a bridge back to the internet of blockchains.
Bridges require nodes operating on both networks, or as I like to think of them, certificate authorities. I specifically used the phrase "federated" cryptographic reddit for a reason. How are we supposed to know what planets map to what EVM addresses, and verify one planet does not have more than one address? Well that sounds like a double spend problem to me, the very thing blockchain was invented to prevent. Every Creator DAO can be bootstrapped, independently, by a set of authorities that can be managed as a dentropydaemon-wiki/Software/List/Gnosis Safe 1 on a blockchain of their choosing. A quorum of Gnosis Safe addresses would be required to sign for every user, planet, added to the network. Then the user themselves signs the signed signatures, including the block signature of the last user added. The "blockchain" of users, planets, would actually be maintained on the urbit network, not a public blockchain. Urbit Planet's can also use different EVM addresses for different DAO's. Also, a Gnosis Safe is not technically required for a system like this but would simply be recommended. Also, users would not require doing any on chain transaction unless users were required to hold some tokens or a NFT in order to join.
What if every post on reddit formed its own chain of cryptographic signatures for every up vote, down vote, comment, tag, and token gifted (reddit gold) performed on said post. All the "Adding Context" mentioned earlier is done like this. The sharing of these signature chains all done through the urbit network. These signature chains can be redeemed for reputation token on chain via an oracle like reality.eth and be integrated with something like snapshot or Gnosis Safe with the Voting Module (More on Oracle's Later). The ability to upvote and down vote content can optionally require a specific kind of NFT or require token holder threshold be met. The minting of the token into reputation can also have a tax on it that would give the creator DAO a treasury. You want power within this DAO, you must sacrifice some of yours. User Stories Required. Now let's talk a bit about implementation.
Now, how would I actually go about developing this. I understand that urbit currently has storage issues and a Creator DAO like the one I have described would require some sort of CDN. Just spit balling here, I am not attached to this technology, but I think that Ceramic.Network would great as a storage backend for a project like this. The "user planet blockchain" data structure would fit perfectly into their streams API and planets themselves could eventually fit into their DID standard. Also, ceramic.network could hold the actual images, videos, and other media files and metadata required to get something like this working, further investigation required. In the very least, Urbit can natively manage the identity planet chain and posts but ceramic might work nicely as a CDN, as compared to torrents mentioned earlier. In short, if I were developing this without urbit I would use Ceramic.
In terms of a proof of concept, I have a proposal for a DAO extension that does not seem to exist. I propose developing a DAO extension to allow DAO's to issue a token mapped to a Token Bonding Curve. Token Bonding Curves work by binding the value of a token to a stable asset. Let's do a though experiment to illistrate this using PCoin. A linear bonding curve would have the first buyer buy a token for 1 DAI and the second user would buy a token for 2 DAI with the third user buying a token for 3 DAI. Now at this point the person who bought PCoin for 1 DAI can sell the token for 3DAI. From here, you can probably imagine all the calculus involved. You can also swap out the linear curve for a logarithmic or parabolic etc... etc... In reality you would likely use a portion of a logarithmic curve. With token bonding curves, people can cash out of communities and gate keep. Curves can also be swapped in and out. If a communities token isn't useful the holder in incentivized not to hold it. If the community's token is useful, more people will be incentivized to buy it. You can also have a second curve shave off a tax of people buying and selling, building a treasury. As for what this looks like in reality as a product, I still need to write some user stories. I am also aware I mentioned turning Merkel proof's of reactions of a post into a token, I think these systems can work together, I just don't know how yet.
Another useful feature of developing a system like this is that it evolves nicely in an Urbit Oracle Network. This application would result in collections of planets bootstrapping Gnosis Safe's on different chains. The wallets, or proxy keys, behind these Gnosis Safe's would be signing stuff all the time. The Merkel proofs of community engagement being minted into a token requires oracles. We can even use the same oracle contracts and networks, but have the data for said event's available only on urbit. I could imagine an oracle network like this become useful to something more than the application I am describing here. Though, again, needs user stories.
Next Steps
- USER STORIES, Integrate this with the Raindrop.io / pinboard idea
- Research reference DAO frameworks such as Substrate Pallets and write Rough Spec for Token Bonding Curve Module
- Research DAO Extensions for Gnosis Safe, Snapshot, and Aragon
- Apply Design until I arrive at POC
Brainstorming
Each Subreddit, NEEDS A CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY
The Stack Overflow Problem where the old posts get all the attention.
Urbit is technically a clean slate operating system implimentation for the 21st centary but it was still booted on Ethereum rather than using something like a good old fashioned PGP Registry.
Never underestimate a small group of highly commited people who think they can change the world.
Generate a NFT with the block number you are in the DAO. The planet owner and the NFT holder can separate therefore this is a bad idea. But the DAO being able to mint their own NFT's that sounds interesting. But what would these NFT's actually do? Buy Advertizing? Buy Bandwidth? I need to map out what every blockchain has ever funded via a DAO.
Another module that would eventaully be needed to develop is using an option to use a proxy signing address within the application rather than the one attached to the Gnosis Safe for example. This could also benifit from a solidity smart contract but I am getting too far ahead of myself.