reb00ted

We can sustainably, fairly, do better. Let's go.

  • 2022-08-07

    An autonomous reputation system

    Context: We never built an open reputation system for the internet. This was a mistake, and that’s one of the reasons why we have so much spam and fake news.

    But now, as governance takes an ever-more prominent role in technology, such as for the ever-growing list of decentralized projects e.g. DAOs, we need to figure out how to give more power to “better” actors within a given community or context, and disempower or keep out the detractors and direct opponents. All without putting a centralized authority in place.

    Proposal: Here is a quite simple, but as I think rather powerful proposal. We use an on-line discussion group as an example, but this is a generic protocol that should be applicable to many other applications that can use reputation scores of some kind.

    1. Let’s call the participants in the reputation system Actors. As this is a decentralized, non-hierarchical system without a central power, there is only one class of Actor. In the discussion group example, each person participating in the discussion group is an Actor.

      An Actor is a person, or an account, or a bot, or anything really that has some ability to act, and that can be uniquely identified with an identifier of some kind within the system. No connection to the “real” world is necessary, and it could be as simple as a public key. There is no need for proving that each Actor is a distinct person, or that a person controls only one Actor. In our example, all discussion group user names identify Actors.

    1. The reputation system manages two numbers for each Actor, called the Reputation Score S, and the Rating Tokens Balance R. It does this in a way that it is impossible for those numbers to be changed outside of this protocol.

      For example, these numbers could be managed by a smart contract on a blockchain which cannot be modified except through the outlined protocol.

  1. The Reputation Score S is the current reputation of some Actor A, with respect to some subject. In the example discussion group, S might express the quality of content that A is contributing to the group.

    If there is more than one reputation subject we care about, there will be an instance of the reputation system for each subject, even if it covers the same Actors. In the discussion group example, the reputation of contributing good primary content might be different from reputation for resolving heated disputes, for example, and would be tracked in a separate instance of the reputation system.

  1. The Reputation Score S of any Actor automatically decreases over time. This means that Actors have a lower reputation if they were rated highly in the past, than if they were rated highly recently.

    There’s a parameter in the system, let’s call it αS, which reflects S’s rate of decay, such as 1% per month.

  1. Actors rate each other, which means that they take actions, as a result of which the Reputation Score of another Actor changes. Actors cannot rate themselves.

    It is out of scope for this proposal to discuss what specifically might cause an Actor to decide to rate another, and how. This tends to be specific to the community. For example, in a discussion group, ratings might often happen if somebody reads newly posted content and reacts to it; but it could also happen if somebody does not post new content because the community values community members who exercise restraint.

  1. The Rating Tokens Balance R is the set of tokens an Actor A currently has at their disposal to rate other Actors. Each rating that A performs decreases their Rating Tokens Balance R, and increases the Reputation Score S of the rated Actor by the same amount.

  2. Every Actor’s Rating Tokens Balance R gets replenished on a regular basis, such as monthly. The regular increase in R is proportional to the Actor’s current Reputation Score S.

    In other words, Actors with high reputation have a high ability to rate other Actors. Actors with a low reputation, or zero reputation, have little or no ability to rate other Actors. This is a key security feature inhibiting the ability for bad actors to take over.

  1. The Rating Token Balance R is capped to some maximum value Rmax, which is a percentage of the current reputation of the Actor.

    This prevents passive accumulation of rating tokens that then could be unleashed all at once.

  1. The overall number of new Ratings Tokens that is injected into the system on a regular basis as replenishment is determined as a function of the desired average Reputation Score of Actors in the system. This enables Actors’ average Reputation Scores to be relatively constant over time, even as individual reputations increase and decrease, and Actors join and leave the system.

    For example, if the desired average Reputation Score is 100 in a system with 1000 Actors, if the monthly decay reduced the sum of all Reputation Scores by 1000, 10 new Actors joined over the month, and 1000 Rating Tokens were eliminated because of the cap, 3000 new Rating Tokens (or something like that, my math may be off – sorry) would be distributed, proportional to their then-current Reputation Scores, to all Actors.

  1. Optionally, the system may allow downvotes. In this case, the rater’s Rating Token Balance still decreases by the number of Rating Tokens spent, while the rated Actor’s Reputation also decreases. Downvotes may be more expensive than upvotes.

    There appears to be a dispute among reputation experts on whether downvotes are a good idea, or not. Some online services support them, some don’t, and I assume for good reasons that depend on the nature of the community and the subject. Here, we can model this simply by introducing another coefficient between 0 and 1, which reflects the decrease of reputation of the downvoted Actor given the number of Rating Tokens spent by the downvoting Actor. In case of 1, upvotes cost the same as downvotes; in case of 0, no amount of downvotes can actually reduce somebody’s score.

To bootstrap the system, an initial set of Actors who share the same core values about the to-be-created reputation each gets allocated a bootstrap Reputation Score. This gives them the ability to receive Rating Tokens with which they can rate each other and newly entering Actors.

Some observations:

Known issues:

I would love your feedback.

This proposal probably should have a name. Because it can run autonomously, I’m going to call it Autorep. And this is version 0.5. I’ll create new versions when needed.

  • 2022-07-27

    Is this the end of social networking?

    Scott Rosenberg, in a piece with the title “Sunset of the social network”, writes at Axios:

    Mark last week as the end of the social networking era, which began with the rise of Friendster in 2003, shaped two decades of internet growth, and now closes with Facebook’s rollout of a sweeping TikTok-like redesign.

    A sweeping statement. But I think he’s right:

    Facebook is fundamentally an advertising machine. Like other Meta products are. There aren’t really about “technologies that bring the world closer together”, as the Meta homepage has it. At least not primarily.

    This advertising machine has been amazingly successful, leading to a recent quarterly revenue of over $50 per user in North America (source). And Meta certainly has driven this hard, otherwise it would not have been in the news for overstepping the consent of its users year after year, scandal after scandal.

    But now a better advertising machine is in town: TikTok. This new advertising machine is powered not by friends and family, but by an addiction algorithm. This addiction algorithm figures out your points of least resistance, and pours down one advertisement after another down your throat. And as soon as you have swalled one more, you scroll a bit more, and by doing so, you are asking for more advertisements, because of the addiction. This addiction-based advertising machine is probably close to the theoretical maximum of how many advertisements one can pour down somebody’s throat. An amazing work of art, as an engineer I have to admire it. (Of course that admiration quickly changes into some other emotion of the disgusting sort, if you have any kind of morals.)

    So Facebook adjusts, and transitions into another addiction-based advertising machine. Which does not really surprise anybody I would think.

    And because it was never about “bring[ing] the world closer together”, they drop that mission as if they never cared. (That’s because they didn’t. At least MarkZ didn’t, and he is the sole, unaccountable overlord of the Meta empire. A two-class stock structure gives you that.)

    With the giant putting their attention elsewhere, where does this leave social networking? Because the needs and the wants to “bring[ing] the world closer together”, and to catch up with friends and family are still there.

    I think it leaves social networking, or what will replace it, in a much better place. What about this time around we build products whose primary focus is actually the stated mission? Share with friends and family and the world, to bring it together (not divide it)! Instead of something unrelated, like making lots of ad revenue! What a concept!

    Imagine what social networking could be!! The best days of social networking are still ahead. Now that the pretenders are leaving, we can actually start solving the problem. Social networking is dead. Long live what will emerge from the ashes. It might not be called social networking, but it will be, just better.

  • 2022-07-26

    A list of (supposed) web3 benefits

    I’ve been collecting a list of the supposed benefits of web3, to understand how the term is used these days. Might as well post what I found:

    • better, fairer internet
    • wrest back power from a small number of centralized institutions
    • participate on a level playing field
    • control what data a platform receives
    • all data (incl. identities) is self-sovereign and secure
    • high-quality information flows
    • creators benefit
    • reduced inefficiencies
    • fewer intermediaries
    • transparency
    • personalization
    • better marketing
    • capture value from virtual items
    • no censorship (content, finance etc)
    • democratized content creation
    • crypto-verified information correctness
    • privacy
    • decentralization
    • composability
    • collaboration
    • human-centered
    • permissionless

    Some of this is clearly aspirational, perhaps on the other side of likely. Also not exactly what I would say if asked. But nevertheless an interesting list.

  • 2022-07-03

    What is a DAO? A non-technical definition

    Definitions of “DAO” (short for Decentralized Autonomous Organization) usually start with technology, specifically blockchain. But I think that actually misses much of what’s exciting about DAOs, a bit like if you were to explain why your smartphone is great by talking about semiconductor circuits. Let’s try to define DAO without starting with blockchain.

    For me:

    A DAO is…

    • a distributed group
    • with a common cause of consequence
    • that governs itself,
    • does not have a single point of failure,
    • and that is digital-native.

    Let’s unpack this:

    • A group: a DAO is a form of organization. It is usually a group of people, but it could also be a group of organizations, a group of other DAOs (yes!) or any combination.

    • This group is distributed: the group members are not all sitting around the same conference table, and may never. The members of many DAOs have not met in person, and often never will. From the get-go, DAO members may come from around the globe. A common jurisdiction cannot be assumed, and as DAO membership changes, over time it may be that most members eventually come from a very different geography than where the DAO started.

    • With a common cause: DAOs are organized around a common cause, or mission, like “save the whales” or “invest in real-estate together”. Lots of different causes are possible, covering most areas of human interest, including “doing good”, “not for profit” or “for profit”.

    • This cause is of consequence to the members, and members are invested in the group. Because of that, members will not easily abandon the group. So we are not talking about informal pop-in-and-out-groups where maybe people have a good time but don’t really care whether the group is successful, but something where success of the group is important to the members and they will work on making the group successful.

    • That governs itself: it’s not a group that is subservient to somebody or some other organization or some other ruleset. Instead, the members of the DAO together make the rules, including how to change the rules. They do not depend on anybody outside of the DAO for that (unless, of course, they decide to do that). While some DAOs might identify specific members with specific roles, a DAO is much closer to direct democracy than representative democracy (e.g. as in traditional organization where shareholders elect directors who then appoint officers who then run things).

    • That does not have a single point of failure and are generally resilient. No single point of failure should occur in terms of people who are “essential” and cannot be replaced, or tools (like specific websites). This often is described in a DAO context as “sufficient decentralization”.

    • And that is digital-native: a DAO usually starts on-line as a discussion group, and over time, as its cause, membership and governance become more defined, gradually turns into a DAO. At all stages members prefer digital tools and digital interactions over traditional tools and interactions. For example, instead of having an annual membership meeting at a certain place and time, they will meet online. Instead of filling out paper ballots, they will vote electronically, e.g. on a blockchain. (This is where having a blockchain is convenient, but there are certainly other technical ways voting could be performed.)

    Sounds … very broad? It is! For me, that’s one of the exciting things about DAOs. They come with very little up-front structure, so the members can decide what and how they want to do things. And if they change their minds, they change their minds and can do that any time, collectively, democratically!

    Of course, all this freedom means more work because a lot of defaults fall away and need to be defined. Governance can fail in new and unexpected ways because we don’t have hundreds of years of precedent in how, say, Delaware corporations work.

    As an inventor and innovator, I’m perfectly fine with that. The things I tend to invent – in technology – are also new and fail in unexpected ways. Of course, there is many situations where that would be unacceptable: when operating a nuclear power plant, for example. So DAOs definitely aren’t for everyone and everything. But where existing structure of governance are found to be lacking, here is a new canvas for you!

  • 2022-06-16

    A new term: “Platform DAO”

    I usually invent technology, but today I present you with a new term:

    Platform DAO.

    Web searches don’t bring anything meaningful up, so I claim authorship on this term.

    Admittedly the amount of my inventiveness here is not very large. Trebor Scholz coined the term “Platform Cooperative” in an article in 2014 (according to Wikipedia). He started with the long established term of a “cooperative”, and applied it to an organization that creates and maintains a software platform. So we get a “Platform Co-op”.

    I’m doing the exact same thing: a “Platform DAO” is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, a DAO, that creates and maintains a software platform. Given that DAOs largely are the same as Co-ops, except that they use technology in order to automate, and reduce the cost of some governance tasks – and also use technology for better transparency – it seems appropriate to create that parallel.

    Why is this term needed? This is where I think things get really interesting.

    The Platform co-op article on Wikipedia lists many reasons why platform co-ops could deliver much more societal benefits than traditional vendor-owned tech platforms can. But it also points out some core difficulties, which is why we haven’t seen too many successful platform co-ops. At the top of which is the difficulty of securing early-stage capital.

    Unlike in co-ops, venture investors these days definitely invest in DAOs.

    Which means we might see the value of “Platform Co-ops” realized in their form as “Platform DAOs” as venture investment would allow them to compete at a much larger scale.

    Imagine if today, somebody started Microsoft Windows. As a DAO. Where users, and developers, and the entire VAR channel, are voting members of the DAO. This DAO will be just as valuable as Microsoft – in fact I would argue it would be more valuable than Microsoft –, with no reason to believe it would deliver fewer features or quality, but lots of reasons to believe that the ecosystem would rally around it in a way that it would never rally around somebody else’s company.

    Want to help? (No, I’m not building a Windows DAO. But a tech platform DAO that could be on that scale.) Get in touch!