Digital Communities and Embracing the Commons
Maintaining the Value of Digital Truth
The dream of blockchain is prosperity through decentralized, individual responsibility. Public blockchain applications like Bitcoin offer everyone equal access to participation. With Bitcoin, anyone can lend their excess computational capacity towards building this decentralized world, with those who participate the most seeing the greatest rewards. These principles of equality were expected to enable the distributed, mass participation which should create predictable value through system stability.
In practice, this equality has led to inequitable uncertainty.
The technological focus on unmitigated individualism seen in blockchain applications like Bitcoin allows the most dominant to dominate. In the case of Bitcoin, Chinese miners recently controlled over 70% of the network’s collective hashrate, 29% of trading volume, and potentially up to 39% of all Bitcoins. This kind of network dominance exists because of China’s resource advantage. With so much centralization around Chinese miners and traders, the entire Bitcoin network can be fundamentally altered by Chinese decisions — a reality that was not supposed to be possible.
Yet this architecture is not unique to Bitcoin. This focus on unmitigated individualism is a fundamental design choice seen throughout most blockchain applications. This design assumes that the aggregate outcome of uninhibited individual actions will produce a collective benefit, much like the Central Limit Theorem assumes the aggregate effect of normal actions will always approach normalcy. In the same way that the Central Limit Theorem fails when inputs are abnormal, the unmitigated participation of dominant entities in any economic society has nearly always lead to inequity.
The Neopublic Approach
Trokt’s “neopublic” blockchain network attacks this inequity by combining public governance and private technology elements into a flexible, efficient, collaborative architecture. Unlike many public networks, the central authorities holding Trokt’s truth, the full nodes, must be pre-approved to participate within the Trokt digital community. These nodes cannot be just anonymous servers in a Chinese or Russian warehouse, the Trokt neopublic architecture requires each node to be sponsored by a known team of individuals or organizations who take responsibility for the ongoing maintenance and decisions of the node. While it is the responsibility of Trokt to ensure the technological integrity of all approved communications is maintained, it is the opportunity of a node’s sponsoring team to determine what communications or uses are collectively approved.
The center of this decision making for each node resides with the Node Governance Community (NGC). The NGC is a group of individuals who have earned a stake in the governance of that node, and make decisions on behalf of the node. If a customer does not like the price or restrictions imposed by a specific node’s NGC, the customer may negotiate with any of the other limited number of node NGCs in the Trokt network. Since all NGCs are independent, any NGC can strike any deal with any customer.
If this individualism remained unmitigated, the Trokt network would be highly susceptible to devaluation. For example, if one NGC starts slashing prices relative to other NGCs, or starts allowing disreputable customers to write data tied to illicit activities, the actions of a single NGC have the ability to devalue the entire network. Trokt avoids this risk of devaluation by prioritizing the many over any one.
To prioritize the good of all participants over the value attained by a single entity, Trokt requires community collaboration both upstream and downstream of each NGC. To avoid problems upstream, each NGC is required to allow individual customers to collaboratively engage in local community decision making. Each NGC may tailor its collaboration method in any unique manner that best suits its end users, yet any tailoring must ensure end users are benefited by and empowered to participate in NGC decisions. This framework will still allow end users to engage another node if its current NGC is not meeting its needs, yet it should be more likely that an end user will stay and influence its digital community to better meet its needs.
Identically, Trokt ensures downstream stability in its network through NGC collaboration within its digital commons.
The Digital Commons Solution
The Trokt blockchain network is valuable because its users trust that it will always be able to validate their truth. This trust recedes if the network becomes associated with disreputable customers. This value diminishes if the use cost no longer reflects the value provided. NGCs cannot compete for customers as if they are operating in a zero-sum world. Without mitigating the pursuit of market share by nodes in the Trokt blockchain network, NGCs would devalue the network in the same way overfishing a public pond brings starvation.
The neopublic structure of the Trokt blockchain network creates a pure tragedy of the commons dilemma. To prevent devaluation of the network, individual and community values must align. To do this, Trokt employs tiers of governance. At the node level, any member of the public may earn a stake in the NGC of each node, and each NGC decides what data and from whom may be written to its node. This is balanced at the network level by the Digital Truth Governance Committee (DTGC) that oversees operation of the entire network, on which representatives of each NGC participate.
This hierarchy requires NGCs to consider both how they maximize the value of their node, while not reducing the value of the entire network. In the competition for customers, the victory of one NGC must also better its rival. In the competition for innovation, breakthroughs must be additive for everyone. In the competition for growth, the inclusion of new nodes must benefit both existing and future NGCs. In the competition for truth, the ledger’s expansion must also increase its exclusivity.
In the “digital commons,” Trokt is blazing a new path under the guidance of DTGC Chairperson Angie Raymond. With input from an array of international experts with insight into organizations like the American Bar Association, the National Center for State Courts, or the Delaware Court of Chancery, Trokt has a commanding head start on how to apply Ostrom solutions in the world of digital capitalism.
Now only time will tell if Trokt can instill community in a digital world that almost myopically prizes individuality.
This article was supported with guidance and input from Angie Raymond and Corey Pigott. To learn more about Trokt’s neopublic blockchain network, please visit www.ecert.email
