Kleros Community Update #0— April 2018
Exciting things have been happening here at Kleros since our last update some months ago. We have achieved a number of important milestones in product development, established partnerships, participated in conferences, launched our Early Juror Program, and of course, announced our token sale for May 15.
Token Sale
An important milestone for us was setting the date of our token sale for May 15. We will distribute tokens using the Interactive Coin Offering protocol. It’s a new token sale strategy advocated by Vitalik which aims at a more egalitarian distribution of tokens and guarantees participation to every contributor.
In place of one large token sale, we will have it split into a number of rounds. In the first one, starting on May 15, 16% of the tokens will be sold.
We will announce the next rounds as we reach key milestones in our product and market development roadmap. In the crazy world of ICOs, we want Kleros’ public sale to be a model of fairness, transparency, and accountability.
To find out more, read the announcement in full, this post explaining how the token sale strategy works and visit our token sale website to learn more.
Product Development
The development team formed by Clément, Nicolas, Sam and Enrique is making great progress in our product roadmap.
We already have a proof of concept that you can test for yourself. At this url you can see a contract creation interface for escrowed payments and at this one you can see the interface where jurors rule disputes.
The user interface isn’t optimized (it’s a work in progress) but the prototype is functional. Be sure to have MetaMask installed in order to use it.
Read Enrique’s recently published development update here to understand where we are in terms of product development. And of course you can also check our GitHub to keep track of our work. All our code is open source and we have a $2,000 monthly dev bounty for contributors to Kleros’ code base. To learn more about the bounty program, see here.
Partnerships
We have signed two partnerships with prominent blockchain organizations. One of them with Ink Protocol and the other one with Dether. More potential partnerships are in discussion.
Our vision for Kleros is for it to become a multipurpose arbitrator, a platform where all the projects in the decentralized ecosystem can delegate dispute resolution to. The partnerships with Ink Protocol and Dether will allow us to pilot test our technology in e-commerce disputes and token curated lists.
To learn more about the business side of Kleros, read this post.
Our vision is that platforms can select from different interoperable arbitrators. For this, Clément has proposed the ERC792. The separation between Arbitrable and Arbitrator contracts allows for the possibility to separate the ruling from its enforcement. By implementing this standard, Dapps can easily switch from one arbitration service to another and allow users to choose the arbitration service they prefer.
To learn more about the arbitration standard, read this post.
Kleros Early Juror Program
Partnerships are important for having disputes to arbitrate. But for Kleros to work, we also need users serving as jurors on the platform.
Last week, we launched Kleros’ Early Juror Program with the goal of recruiting early jurors for our upcoming pilots and bootstrapping the network. The program included an airdrop of 5 million PNK, (0,5% of the total supply), the token that users need to deposit in order to be drawn as jurors on the platform.
We were overwhelmed by the community support. The 5,000 available spots were filled in just 14 hours, (we expected that to happen within 10 days).
To learn more about Kleros’ Early Juror Program, read this post.
Kleros Research
Kleros has an innovative approach to dispute resolution. Instead of using traditional arbitration methods, the process is based on cryptoeconomics for generating the incentives for agents to behave honestly.
As far as we know, this type of approach has never been tried before. This is why a key part of Kleros’ success depends on testing and calibrating the mechanism for producing fair rulings. This requires conducting empirical research in order to understand juror voting patterns, identify voting biases and optimize the mechanism design for speed and cost of resolution.
We regularly produce new research material, like this post comparing Kleros’ and Augur’s use of the game theoretical principle of the Schelling Point by Clément and William, Kleros’ cryptoeconomic researchers.
Spreading the Word
During the last months, we have participated in a number of conferences and shows spreading the word about Kleros.
In addition to that, a large number of media articles were produced, including this one published by Forbes Asia and this one in Sputnik News.
The Community
We at Kleros take decentralization very seriously. And we’re implementing that ideal in our work structure. We are a core team of 9 people based in Argentina, France, Portugal, the US (Oregon and California), Canada, Germany, Slovenia, and Serbia.
Kleros core team is just a small part of a bigger movement. A community of over 6,500 people in Telegram and 6,000 followers on Twitter is where the real focus comes. These are the agoras where debate about the future of blockchain and law happens as well as where the users that will help test and build our product are.
Join the community in our social media channels.
As the date of the token sale approaches, we are also looking for community moderators. In particular, russian and chinese speakers. You can find out more about this by joining our Telegram and contacting Stuart (@stuart_james) directly.
Get Involved!
Participate in the token sale coming up on May 15.
Help us identify new use cases for Kleros.
Participate in research programs. We currently have some of the brightest young minds involved in our research.
Help us spread the word and tell your friends about Kleros.
Lots has happened since the kick-off of the Kleros project in April 2017. We have achieved a number of important milestones in product development, partnerships, participation in conferences, the launch of our Early Juror Program and the announcement of our token sale for May 15th.
We’re immensely proud of the development work we’ve done and of the community that’s starting to blossom.
Onward and upward!
Learn more
Kleros is a Blockchain Dispute Resolution Layer. It provides fast, secure, and affordable arbitration for virtually everything.
Join the conversation on Telegram.
Join our Slack for developer conversations.
Visit our website.
Read our white paper and the one-pager.
Get updates on Medium.
Follow us on Twitter.
Contribute on Github.
Telegram Official Announcements Channel.
