MVP Research Network
The system outlined in this article was designed by Mariano Di Pietrantonio, Ernesto Gallegos and myself. It’s a small initial prototype of a larger system developed by the same people, to be outlined in future posts.
Most products in the ecosystem are building whitepapers with very complex and untested incentive structures. Roadmaps can extend to 1–2 years of development before the product sees the light. We’re taking a different direction, taking inspiration from Gall’s law:
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system. — John Gall”
This is why we’re going to be shipping many small products with self-contained incentive structures. With development times of one month max, and with the intention of iterating them quickly. We will use these small and tested crypto ecosystems to construct larger and more complex systems.
All of these small products will be using RES, our network token, as their native currency. Even though individually they could very well use ETH, it makes sense for the overall system to have its own token, so given that the small parts will in the future be part of that whole, we want to make them ERC20 compatible from the get-go.
One of the core flows that we want to test is decentralized research collaboration. We’re specifying a very minimal initial research network based on a variation of bounties, to build as one of our first MVPs.
Network participants
Creators
Creates research topics and direct the attention of other researchers. A research topic is a self-contained scientific question, hypothesis or problem to solve. A Creator is just a Researcher with extra privileges within a specific research topic. They get rewarded with a percentage of the funds secured.
Researchers
Contribute to research topics to help answer or solve them. There is a percentage of the funds secured in a research topic that get distributed amongst researchers, depending on the impact of their contributions.
Arbiters
Third parties with knowledge and reputation in the research field corresponding to a research topic. They get rewarded with a percentage of the funds secured.
Editors
Write papers that communicate the findings that come from a research topic. They get rewarded with a percentage of the funds secured.
Donors
Provide funds to incentivize researchers to contribute to a particular research topic.
Research Topic Flow
Topic Creation
To start the research initiative, a Creator launches a new ResearchTopic. She needs to include:
- An Arbiter that will mediate the topic. The Arbiter’s address could easily be a multisig with multiple arbiters behind it. The Creator is incentivized to pick trusted and knowledgeable Arbiters in order to gather research talent and secure funds.
- A question, hypothesis or problem to solve.
- A description with extra info required to tackle the topic.
- Percentage of rewards that will go to the Editor.
- Percentage of rewards that will go to the Arbiter.
- Percentage of rewards that the Creator will keep.
Contributing
Once the ResearchTopic is live, Researchers can start sending contributions. A contribution would be the hash of an IPFS file that contains the actual text.
Donating
Donors can send RES to the ResearchTopic at any point before it’s closed. Once an Arbiter closes the topic and is in the process of distributing credit, no more donations are accepted.
Closing a Topic
The Arbiter can call the research finished and close the topic. The Arbiter should rank each contribution as:
- Unhelpful
- Small Contribution
- Medium Contribution
- Key Contribution
The percentage of funds reserved for Researchers will be distributed between all contributions with Key contributions earning more than Medium, those more than Small and Unhelpful contributions not earning any rewards.
Publishing
The last step in the research process is publishing a paper that summarizes or communicates the findings. Any Editor can submit a paper proposal, If accepted by the Arbiter, the Editor will receive the reward, the paper will be linked with the topic, and the topic will be finalized. At this point the final percentage, reserved for the Creator will also be unlocked for withdrawal.
Conclusion
We can build systems with this level of complexity in weeks instead of months or years. Test them on mainnet, and #buidl from there. Once this module is live, it would be easy to turn it into a multistep process. We can emulate the scientific method, going from hypothesis generation, to gathering background material, developing methods for experimention, running the experiments and finally coming up with conclusions. All of this in a decentralized, collaborative and trustless manner.
If you’re interested in discussing or learning more, you are welcome to join our telegram and continue the conversation.
