Where’s the Value? Proof of Contributions and Value Flow

Welcome to the world of Value 3.0 where communities can create and track value across many different dimensions to turn the tragedy of the commons into the euphoria of the commons.

Value Flows

Value is a social construct. It ebbs and flows, and is only meaningful when it is in motion. Value can take many forms. It can be material in nature, or it can be immaterial or affective. It is frequently contextual, as needs and wants vary in intensity over time and for different people.

Value is the common grammar that enables exchange to take place; it’s the basis of parties coming to an agreement on equivalence. There are many ways of accounting for value. We have dived to the foundational primitives of value flows by recognising that value ultimately stems from, and is grounded by, things that human beings care about.

The Smart Trade Networks ecosystem is in many ways akin to a mutual society, in which members are the users of the infrastructure and the services. The membership is framed through participation on the Data Integrity in Supply Chains Inc. (DISCA), a not for profit association, registered in Australia with global membership potential.

DISCA seeks to support and reward effort and contributions that go toward improving the integrity of global supply chains. It tracks contributions and effort of members through the use of tokens tracked on a blockchain registry. The token is STN. The token is the mechanism that connects the value of member contributions and effort with the overall value flows of the ecosystem.

Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

Proof of Contribution, Proof of Effort, Proof of Community

STN is thus a membership rewards token, which is a way of tracking and accounting for contributions and effort. We can call this value accounting Proof of Contribution and Proof of Effort.

A community, an ecosystem or a network is only as strong as the efforts and contributions of its members. As such, we can say that Proof of Contribution and Proof of Effort = Proof of Community.

STN reward tokens track effort and contribution, and provide member benefits proportionately. As such, as the network generates value through fees revenues, it is able to provide a Reward to members based on the number of STN tokens they hold. Distributions are pro rata. All members of the Data Integrity in Supply Chains Inc. (DISCA) get STN tokens, based on their contributions.

STN reward tokens can be accumulated by any of the following 3 main ways:

1. Invest in portfolio enterprises. This is done subject to the relevant compliance obligations of applicable jurisdictions. Investors gain enterprise equity as well as STN reward tokens.
2. Purchase of STN reward tokens without investing in enterprise equity. Purchasing STN constitutes payment of membership dues.
3. Earn STN through contribution of effort, IP or some other in-kind resource. You can also earn STN as a business or organisation by becoming a network user.

These pathways are summarised in the illustration below:

Benefits of Membership

Benefits of membership include:

1. Access to STN Infrastructure to develop projects. This enables rapid prototyping, customisation and deployment of systems to support project growth. This is beneficial to enterprises or organisations whether they are small or big;
2. Access to the Credentialed Marketplaces, to sell products and services, and at varying levels of membership benefit from discounts depending on your tokens tally;
3. Access to education and capacity building resources, via our Learn & Earn initiatives;
4. Access to governance mechanisms across the length and breadth of the ecosystem, via our Multisig architecture including but not limited to shaping R&D priorities, project resource deployment, effort rewards distributions etc.;
5. Access to tools and support to initiate projects “from the ground up” to track value flows and reach across the ecosystem to seek synergies and complementary activities;
6. Access to network membership bonuses based on network velocity and volume by member enterprises and member consumers;
7. Access to early-bird opportunities to participate in ecosystem projects;
8. Access to opportunities to operate Network Archive Nodes and be recognised and rewarded for this effort with monthly Membership Reward Tokens. Members who purchase 1,000 STN tokens before 1 October 2021 will receive a pre-configured STN Raspberry Pi Archive Node; and
9. Access to STN Privacy Smartphones. These will be available in early 2022 to members who purchase 2,000 STN tokens before 1 October 2021; and
10. For a limited period, memberships purchased prior to 1 October 2021 will also receive a complimentary allocation of STNPay tokens for use in the Marketplaces.

Broader Applications

The core concepts described above can be used to support the creation of collaborative projects from the ground-up, where parties seek to track the contributions of each other — agreed via multisig governance protocols — and which therefore acknowledge the different kinds of contributions that are made to get an activity off the ground.

In general terms, all activities require a range of resources to be mobilised. These, in summary are:

1. Human effort (time and sweat);
2. Material resources (things);
3. Ideas (let’s call this ‘intellectual property’); and
4. Money Capital.

Photo by Anaya Katlego on Unsplash

What’s interesting about this is that the last of these, money capital, is only needed when the activity cannot source any of the others without it. Money capital by definition, therefore, only has meaningful value when it is exchanged for one or more of the other three resources.

The Proof of Effort / Proof of Contributions framework described here can be thought as a ‘primitive’ that can be mobilised to support any collaborative endeavour. Rather than frame value through money terms, this approach accounts for value through agreed relations between the chosen unit of account (which could be an activity-specific token) and the agreed contributions or efforts. As more effort and contributions are made, a project can be expected to become more mature, with more achieved and fewer unknowns. In other words, a project progressively becomes de-risked through the contributions and efforts of the collaborators.

Should at some point the project cannot source sufficient labour, material or ideas resources in exchange for tokenised recognition of Proof of Contribution / Effort to progress, and needs the input of money capital to procure these resources, it will be conceivable for the money capital contributions to be registered in line with the project’s unit of account. When this takes place, a financialised ‘value’ is materialised for all prior contributions / efforts.

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About Smart Trade Networks

Smart Trade Networks is a general purpose blockchain technology-enabled supply chain asset registration, tracking and trading ecosystem.

Smart Trade Networks undertakes R&D in cross-border supply chain and trade systems in collaboration with researchers at Queensland University of Technology and the Future Food Systems Cooperative Research Centre, in Australia.

More information about Smart Trade Networks can be found at:

Medium Article: What is Smart Trade Networks?

Telegram: https://t.me/SmartTradeNetworks

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCarnV-OEusVcPRil2gDF3Ig

Website: https://www.smarttradenetworks.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/smart-trade-networks

Twitter: @networks_trade