This RCon3 session features Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo, co-founder of Proof Media. Proof organizes a “wise crowd” to answer questions. Their goal is to identify truth in journalism from a large, well-incentivized community. To do this, they need a tokenized system and a scalable blockchain.
Journalism lacks the kind of mechanisms to filter through content that music and art have. For journalism, there are only fact-checking services that don’t scale.
See below the video for a summary of its contents.
Proof doesn’t use prediction markets, reputation, or other features that they believe give the wrong incentives and make gaming the system easier. Independent blind voting is used as opposed to a market-based system.
“In order to have a wise crowd, it’s not a financial market. It’s not a prediction market. Prices elicit fear and greed rather than wisdom.”
Characteristics of a wise crowd
1990s brought the idea of democratization of content. Everyone could have their own voice, be their own publisher.
Side effects of “everyone having a voice”
1990s brought the idea of democratization of content. Everyone could have their own voice, be their own publisher.
Negative side effects
- Ad-based journalism
- Social media platforms used to monetize content
- Misinformation (rating, evaluation problem)
- Echo chambers
Scalability v accuracy
- Scalablilty: Reddit, Yelp, but not very accurate
- Accuracy: Consumer Reports, FactCheck.org.
- Requires hiring people, etc.
- Diminishing marginal utility with each person they hire
- Not just misinformation — also rating and evaluating problems
Proof goal: scalable, accurate, verifiable
- We have the democratization of content creation
- Proof is aiming to democratize quality control
- Journalism lacks a scalablemechanism to filter through content
Filtering through voting
- No prices, odds, or returns
- Blind, independent votes based on research
- Use Proof tokens to weight choice
- No set end time for vote
The vote outcome is based on seven different parameters. There’s an algorithm that closes the vote when the conditions for a wise crowd are met.
In the first version, voting will be on entire articles. This will help identify articles that are blatantly false, but will probably not identify grey areas as well. Later versions will have line-by-line voting.
Incentivization
- Payout at voting close – can earn or lose
- Anonymous voting
- No reputation
- Quadratic voting – adding more weight increases cost exponentially
Token uses
- Ownership of platform
- Participate in governance
- Participate in voting
Why use a blockchain?
- Auditability – allows for trustless voting
- Immutability – articles flagged as false can’t be changed later
- Token-based ownership so rent is not extracted from users
- RChain’s scalability will help Proof create a global editorial system
Roadmap
- Proof released an online trivia game with points to increase user engagement.
- An alpha will be released in December. It won’t use tokens yet, but will show how the technology works.
- The ETA for their beta is April.
- White paper coming soon
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