“Curation Markets”, Supplementing Creativity With Smart Contracts.

The why, the how, and kicking Alice down the blockchain rabbit hole.

Before we begin.

Before I dive into “Curation Markets” and why I’m excited about working with district0x for the upcoming launch of Meme Factory, I would like to tell a story.

I would prefer to start this story off with an uplifting and inspiring intro with all the reasons I think everything is awesome but I think I will be honest instead…

A Slap In The Face…

I was Alice and our dysfunctional world kicked me down the rabbit’s hole before I could brace for the impact. As I began falling, I had a series of perpetual nervous breakdowns that only seemed to intensify as each realization about our world became clear.

I realized that fractional reserve banking is a silent debt handed to children who don’t exist yet. I realised that money as we know it today, is purely a crowdfunding campaign for policies I don’t agree with and these policies are based around a political cycle of “boom, bust, business and war”.

I then fell into a deep state of anxiety that consumed me and created an obsessive drive to seek out the solutions and alternative life styles. While I would like to attribute these realizations to blockchain technology alone, the fact is, it’s only a small piece of a larger puzzle. Though it did give me that little slap that I needed to wake up and see what needs to be done to make existing social realities and models obsolete. I also realized that I no longer had to use the “boom, bust, war” tokens (fiat money) that the traditional financial institutions have been peddling.

I ultimately came to the realization that the money you choose to use is a vote for the opinions and beliefs you align with. While war is an unfortunate and inevitable reality, I simply do not want to use a type of money that creates debt for children who don’t exist just to pay for those wars. I’m done, I want to stop the bullets…

Falling deeper

As I began to travel further down the rabbit hole of applied cryptography (Blockchain), I began to see the larger puzzle take shape. Each piece of this puzzle has one underlying characteristic, “self empowerment”.

With this in mind we should ask the question, what is self empowerment?

Self empowerment is rooted in autonomy of the individual and autonomy is achieved through disintermediation. Disintermediation is what the world is trending towards at an exponential rate. We are all falling now…

The problem

To take you on this journey, let's look at the reality of every creative minded person. A creative individual spends a lifetime dedicating every ounce of their free time to a passionate desire to craft and build something new. That individual has little to no empowerment to do anything with that craft without placing their hard work into the hands of a less than ethical industry full of middle men and charlatans.

I’m excited to be working on decentralized marketplaces and curation markets like Meme Factory at district0x. I feel like I have the power to supplant existing power structures and middle men even without knowing how to code. That bar to entry is being lowered with every year as we all march forward with decentralization. This is the “new model” that will replace the existing ones and it couldn’t come any sooner.

Okay… A “curation market” is what exactly?

Speaking in regards to the up coming ‘Meme Factory’ launch, a “Curation Market” is an Ethereum smart contract that continuously issues an ERC20 token. This issuance model can be tied to a specific piece of content along with many variations of economic incentives for the market participants. This is a developing idea that is rapidly starting to evolve well beyond memes. It could even be applied to content such as movies, books, news, or political information.

Curating information within a community for a specific purpose while having a token associated with a goal, allows people to benefit from a “skin in the game” approach to curating information and content. This is in stark contrast to the endless likes and upvotes on the platforms we know today. Curating content could even be an individual’s livelihood in the near future.

If incentive alignment is structured effectively through a smart contract, this can dramatically increase the quality of content and the overall benefit people receive from of the curation process.

Why start with memes?

Some people are unclear on why memes are a first move for district0x but it’s important to understand that this is merely to see the economics in action and to establish a baseline market template. Once this proof of concept is in action and the economics are refined, it could then be applied to any other content with very little effort.

The content being curated could be applied to music, movies, books, art, or any other content in a marketplace similar to the districts that district0x will be creating. The concept can even be applied to the marketplaces themselves when thinking in terms of the district0x voting app.

The voting app could be looked at as a very basic form of curation using a token model because it allows DNT token holders to swarm around a specific district proposal. To take this a step further, you can add a smart contract managed market component that increases the cost of “upvoting” content in an automated fashion. This then moves token curation to the next stage that is a “curation market” smart contract.

The proof of concept that is Meme Factory could also be utilized as a template for other content markets when the district creation interface is launched. You can learn more about the plans for the district creation interface in the district0x white paper.

An example

An area where curation markets could be highly effective is the music industry. There's now a way to monetize peer to peer networks rather than fighting the existing reality through ineffective forms of activism.

Open markets are blossoming and an industry to support those markets is emerging. These markets are based on the the democratization of data and the elimination of “walled garden” business models. Industry incumbents are standing on shaky ground and the walls are falling.

To elaborate on some of the issues we face, let us look at the following reality…

Open source AI music is beginning to take off along with anonymous publishing over immutable networks like IPFS, it’s highly likely we will have an intellectual property crisis in the near future. AI could become so advanced that it will copy music, post, and even monetize it. To top it off, we may not have a way to shut it off if it’s developed as a decentralized app or “dApp”. Don’t get me wrong, this is actually going to be a good thing. Let me explain…

Even if things don’t come to fruition with AI music “piracy”, the fact is that people are beginning to post content to immutable peer to peer networks every day. Once published, the content can’t be removed and there is no one to sue for “piracy”. To solve this, curation markets merged with the ideas of many others in the blockchain space, could empower creators without the need to “sell your soul at the crossroads”.

If creators have an easy way to participate in these new markets, they can build their network effect and reap the benefits that curation markets can potentially offer. This alone turns the tables on the “piracy” conversation regardless of “middle men” and their opinion on the disintermediating effects of peer to peer networks. This could also be a boon for artists looking to supplement current sources of income or possibly even bootstrap operations for an artist just starting out. Some forward thinking artists are already beginning to experiment with token models.

Other Examples

A curation market can take many forms and there are some in existence already. Examples that the district0x community has brought up are Rare Pepe, Steemit, Reddit tokens and depending on how abstract you want to think of things, Doge Coin.

However, the difference with curation markets like Meme Factory is that the market can be decentralized and handled solely by a smart contract. This opens up some interesting possibilities.

Breaking it down

When you contribute ETH to a curation market contract, the contract will automatically send you a unique ERC20 token that represents that content. Each time a person contribute ETH to this smart contract the contract could slightly increase the cost of the token. As a piece of content increases in popularity it naturally rises to the top as one of the more valuable tokens and brings a piece of content to the top of the curated content. There are even discussions about ways to give creators more incentive and value than a market speculator using these markets.

Visualizing it

Disclaimer: this is taking things several years down the road and is speaking in the abstract about the likely possibilities and in no way will reflect how things will look in the future. Though having a vision for where we want to get is important and I encourage others to share their take as well.

This can be imagined as a similar layout as reddit, however instead of upvoting, you spend ETH and get a token and it is upvoted.

This could even be simplified to a point the microtransactions are behind a superimposed UI that doesn’t even mention cryptocurrency, ethereum or smart contracts. It would simply have certain actions within an app that earns the ability to upvote, similar to Reddit Karma but a balance of “points”.

This is a business to consumer payment model similar to the DNT rewards district0x gives for submitting a proposal. However, on the backend this could be a small amount of ETH represented in another voting power balance.

When you have voting power, you can easily use it to upvote and you would receive a token and other content specific benefits to show that you “own” a piece of content. To the end user, this could unlock an educational work flow and opt in private key management along with a risk disclaimer. Or they can decide to not do this and continue to use an app as is.

Governance

While an app like this could be a superimposed centralized service, the back end users can choose to participate directly in governance by acquiring DNT and staking to a district that is powering these front end apps. This would give token holders and business professionals making these apps, a direct say in how the district and business model operates on a very deep level.

Are we there yet?

While the economics of a smart contract driven curation market are yet to be seen, it is definitely worth exploring. Especially considering that this would expand on the “freemium” model employed by companies like Spotify. Instead of giving offering shallow value added services or advertisement removal, curation markets would open up an entirely new revenue source. With this new found revenue, you could also have the option of paying people to not “pirate”. You would also create a free promotional network for content creators.

Conclusion

Businesses who build models on top of these open source tools and concepts like curation markets will have more of a say over their infrastructure, and empower people in a whole new way. This could also create a snowball effect of business to consumer payment models. This could in turn inspire radical social changes as the coming decade unfolds. Especially considering the fact that a dollar a day is the difference between eating and not eating for billions of people.

To get a better idea of the different applications for a curation market, check out the current proposals that have been submitted by the district0x community

District0x community member Rhys Lindmark conducted a great interview with Simon de la Rouviere, a thought leader and creator of the concepts discussed in this post. I highly recommend you watch it if you have some free time.

If I can answer any questions or help in your understanding of curation markets, feel free to reach out.

Please note that I’m still learning myself and I learn best by teaching. If something new has developed that I missed or I have something a bit off base here please let me know.

These things all move so fast. I may be deep down this rabbit hole but there is still much to learn. Teaching is often the best way to learn so I invite you to critique, comment and contribute so we can all learn together.

Learn More

To join the discussion around curation markets:

• Join district0x on Telegram or Reddit
• Drop by the Curation Market Gitter
• Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter
• Curation market white paper from Simon de la Rouviere

Thank you

I want to thank some people for inspiring me and helping build the world we all deserve. I feel like curation markets are a powerful example of the many applications for smart contracts. I would not be where I am with my career and understanding without many people who are passionate about changing our world for the better.

Humans wouldn’t have reached the stars without creative minds and a concept like a curation market could reward those creative minds in a whole new way. I can’t even put my gratitude into words for the people building smart contracts, distributed ledgers, and programmable money.

Thank you to everyone working on applied cryptography and distributed ledgers, Buckminster Fuller for framing my world views, Andreas M. Antonopoulos for being an early inspiration for my education, Vinay Gupta for his gritty and pointed talks. Simon de la Rouviere for his work on curation markets, forward thinking artists like Tatiana Moroz, Stefan Molyneux for doing his best to explain the realities we face with a philosophical approach, Aragon’s forward thinking vision for governance and social progress, all the community members who are engaged and passionate about their ideas, Joe Urgo, Alexander Khoriaty, Matúš Lešťan and the rest of the team for building a platform that will Decentralize the ownership structures of the world’s marketplaces. Thank you all for reading…