Radically Open: The Possibilities of Permissionless Protocols
Building a decentralized application presents a host of UX challenges that must be addressed in order to make a platform accessible to its users. We will be detailing some of these challenges and our approaches to solving them in upcoming blog posts, but today I’d like to talk about the possibilities unlocked by a system that is inherently open.
When we say that the Civil protocol is open, we mean that it is not owned or controlled by any single entity. Once the smart contracts that make up the Civil protocol are deployed on Ethereum’s mainnet, The Civil Media Company cannot take them down or restrict a user’s access to them in any way, as long as that user owns CVL. The protocol is controlled only by the logic of the smart contracts and not any trusted party.
Anyone can build a client that interfaces with the Civil protocol without relying on APIs to be built and maintained by The Civil Media Company.
With this in mind, let’s talk through some examples of tools that can be created to enhance and expand the consumption of and interaction with the Civil protocol in a way where the interests of the users are prioritized over the interests of a for-profit corporation.
It might be helpful to read a bit about Token Curated Registries as well as Civil’s specific TCR design before continuing if you aren’t already familiar with these concepts.
Transparency through Identity
Transparency is a key element in the response to digital disinformation. It is a cross-cutting issue that concerns the whole digital media value chain and aims at making news production and distribution less opaque with a view to supporting users’ ability to better discern between journalistic quality content and various kinds of disinformation.
- A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Disinformation (EU Commission Report of the independent High level Group on fake news and online disinformation) http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=50271
True anonymity can be useful at times, but identity is often a crucial aspect of a social system. Identity can add context to articles and discussions. Within the framework of the Civil Token Curated Registry (TCR), curators might demand transparency of the journalists trying to join the platform, and verified identities might provide that transparency.
The most popular social networks have introduced concepts of identity to varying degrees of failure.
After releasing data in 2012 that revealed up to 83 million Facebook accounts were “fake” and caused a major drop in stock price, Facebook implemented a “real name policy” that required users to use their legal names on their profiles. As is often the case, this heavy handed policy developed by a centralized entity composed primarily of privileged Silicon Valley developers has disproportionately hurt members of marginalized groups.
Native Americans, whose names may include common English words, are often targeted as opaque algorithms incorrectly flag them for suspensions. Transgender users are repeatedly flagged since the name they prefer may not match that of their legal documents. Although the evidence suggests it is far from perfect, the closed nature of Facebook sets it up as the arbiter of identity across the internet. Users have no alternatives without incurring huge social costs.
Similarly, Twitter has developed an identity verification feature with its own glaring flaws. Rather than simply allowing users to verify that they are who they claim to be, Twitter requires users who want the “blue checkmark” to be of “public interest” and follow a set of behavioral guidelines.
Not only does this mean that the centralized entity of Twitter, Inc. gets to decide what is “public interest” or not, it has lead to the “blue checkmark” being perceived as an endorsement of an account and not simply an indicator of identity verification. When users see the racist hate group “The Proud Boys” with a blue checkmark, they are being told (whether intentionally or not) that this is a group that deserves a bigger platform to spread their hate.
I bring up these flawed examples not to introduce a flawless identity verification scheme developed by Civil, but to contrast these closed systems in which a centralized entity determines what tools are allowed to the open Civil protocol in which tools compete for users.
Developers will be able to fork our front-end client (or create their own from scratch) and layer their own identity schemes on top of it. Users will be able to select which identity tools they care about.
This competition of individual feature implementations that can be layered on top of the Civil protocol incentivizes projects to develop tools that serve the interests of the users rather than centralized, tech platforms like Twitter or Facebook, both of which are publicly traded companies that rely largely on ad revenue to maximize profits. That, not promoting quality journalism above all, is at the heart of their incentive model.
One example of such an identity system is uPort (https://www.uport.me/). uPort allows users to verify their identity and bring that verification with them across the decentralized web. In addition to identity verification, uPort allows users to make private and public claims to credentials (claims are verified by other users). Layered on top of Civil, uPort could provide the transparency that allows curators to be sure not only that a journalist is who they say they are, but that they have the expertise they are claiming. For example, if a journalist trying to start a science-focused newsroom claims to be an expert in sub-atomic physics, a uPort credential in sub-atomic physics could add credence to their claim.
Voting
Challenging a newsroom and voting on that challenge are two of the most important actions a user can take when interacting with Civil’s governance structure. Tools can be created around both of these actions to improve a user’s experience with them.
When challenging a newsroom, a deposit of CVL (equal to the newsroom’s application deposit) is required to be staked in order to prevent frivolous challenges and incentivize curators to participate (since a portion of the losing side’s deposit is distributed to the winners). Users with fewer tokens than the required deposit amount might feel their options are limited to voting, not challenging, when they see a newsroom that doesn’t meet Civil’s standards. However, a smart contract could be created that allows users to pool their CVL together in order to challenge the questionable newsroom.
Civil’s Token Curated Registry uses a system called “Partial Lock Commit-Reveal Voting” when token holders vote on challenges to newsrooms. While all token holders will vote as individuals at launch, eventually it will be possible to delegate your tokens to another user.
The smart contract that contains the voting logic can be seen here:https://github.com/ConsenSys/PLCRVoting/blob/master/contracts/PLCRVoting.sol
Developers can build smart contracts that hold tokens and vote on behalf of users. If a user trusts another person’s judgment, they can delegate their tokens to that user. The delegate votes with the user’s tokens (but does not own them and cannot steal them), perhaps charging a percentage of rewards for their service. This is similar to electing an official to serve your interests in ways you cannot, like in a representative democracy as opposed to a direct democracy. Users are free to choose the voting experience that works best for them, whether that means delegating your tokens to another user or group or voting as an individual on every challenge.
An interface for a standard staking contract is discussed here: https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/pull/910. Implementations of this standard that support interaction with TCRs are surely forthcoming.
As new decentralized voting technologies mature, such as the “private voting” being developed by Enigma (https://blog.enigma.co/private-voting-for-tcrs-with-enigma-b441b5d4fa7b), developers could create smart contracts that allow private votes to be passed through to the Civil TCR. In this way, voting could be done anonymously, even though Civil’s PLCRVoting contract is not explicitly anonymous.
New Types of Newsrooms
On the protocol level a newsroom is a smart contract which tracks the content published by a group of newsmakers. It is the atomic unit of Civil’s Token Curated Registry (i.e. the newsroom smart contract is what applies and is whitelisted or rejected, not individual journalists).
Certainly, we at Civil believe there is no replacement for journalists doing the work of journalism. The destruction of jobs brought by the vultures at companies like Tronc have left people around the world less informed and less well equipped to combat fraud, waste, and corruption. The vast majority of newsrooms on Civil are likely to resemble traditional newsrooms with individuals functioning in specialized roles like editor, reporter, photographer, etc.
In fact, our implementation of a newsroom (which can be seen here: https://github.com/joincivil/Civil/blob/master/packages/contracts/contracts/newsroom/Newsroom.sol — subject to change before launch) supports this likely organization structure. Editors publish stories on behalf of reporters who have signed the content to validate authorship.
The protocol, however, does not require that newsrooms use our specific smart contract implementation. Furthermore, the protocol does not require for the smart contract to be controlled by humans.
Developers can build smart contracts controlled by software that uses machine learning and other techniques to write news stories. Perhaps it scans articles and summarizes them for easier consumption or synthesizes information across several articles on the same topic. If the community decides that this software-controlled newsroom is doing reliable and ethical work, they can admit it to the registry where it is treated just like any other newsroom.
Going further, we can imagine a newsroom contract that launches its own token used to stake in favor of which software should control it. Now the newsroom contract can continue to evolve in a completely decentralized, essentially autonomous way. A curation market for software created news articles can develop on this smart contract and if the curation is good enough, it could be admitted to the Civil TCR.
Conclusion
What we’ve seen are three examples of functionality that can be added to the Civil ecosystem without any special permissions granted to developers or any APIs needing to be created by The Civil Media Company. Even if The Civil Media Company gets hit by a company-sized bus, the protocol will live on in perpetuity with functionality added by anyone that wants to put in the work. The open nature of this kind of permissionless protocol means that no longer does the creator of a platform have a monopoly on the features built on top of it. Features will have to compete for users by serving their needs, not the needs of any one corporation.
If you’re a developer and you’d like to learn more about the Civil protocol or our front-end client, check out our Github repository here: https://github.com/joincivil/Civil and join our Gitter lobby: https://gitter.im/joincivil/Lobby.
If you’d like to learn more about the Civil protocol and our upcoming token sale, you can do so here: https://civil.co/cvl/ and you can register for the token sale here: https://tokenfoundry.com/registration/signup
And if you’d like to stay updated on all my great ideas (e.g. “Why can’t I just buy $20 worth of quarters for $20 on amazon?”), you can follow me on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/okay_nick.
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