Token Curated Registries in Butterfly Economy
Token Curated Registries (TCRs) seems to be a very interesting idea. I like the principles that one of the main layers of decentralization should work similar to how people (nature) work — by making lists.
I believe, TCRs can be one of the most important layers of the future decentralized architecture — the layer that helps data distribution.
TCR works on the following principle. Applicants can apply to the list, and their applications will be accepted by so called ‘‘voters’’. Then, valuable lists can be used by various consumers — e.g. software tools.
Generally, I think TCRs do not have to be necessary bound with one particular incentive or governance model. The market will decide which models are suitable for what kind of purposes. E.g. in the case of fast changing data, the updating speed could be more important than any other parameter.
In this article, I want to point out how we would use TCRs in Butterfly economy. We want to make a flexible economy which adjusts to users’ needs almost in the real time. We are talking about a highly dynamic environment in which current incentive models of TCRs may not always respond well (please provide a feedback).
I believe that to build a fully decentralized economy we need to follow one principle. This principle is a division of users and their behaviour from their observation, analysis and guidance.
Frankly, all users’ possibilities might not be limited by particular software. On the other hand, all software tools might be able to independently observe, analyze, suggest, categorise and make a reasoning on the public behaviour of users.
Following this principle, we can be sure that users can behave freely and software tools (e.g. AIs) have all possible information to suggest the best possible solutions for user’s needs.
In case of TCRs with the incentive model mentioned above, we break this principle. To become an applicant, eventually to be listed, and to be recognized by consumers of TCRs (including AIs), a user must actively apply.
This becomes a bottleneck for highly dynamic economies in which software tools should be able to take all existing facts into consideration. The user which will not apply, and thus will not be listed, will not be simply considered and excluded by AIs in the process of solving someone’s need.
But in fact, there are many reasons why the user will not apply to be listed in TCR. They will simply not recognize importance of being a member of particular TCR or there will be too many TCRs, making people ignore them.
In the flexible and dynamic economy, new opportunities, demand for new services and categorizations appear quickly. In the same way a user’s roles can change quickly, even without her intention or notice. Management of users listings in TCR will become impossible.
Because of the reasons above, we consider suggest to implement TCRs, respectively their incentive model, in a slightly different way in Butterfly economy.
We assume that running TCRs is the highest interest of software developers developing various AIs. They can monetize data referenced in TCRs through their software tools. Logically, they can pay for data and get data for the best possible price is their interest.
In the proposed model, we add one more role called “proposer”, while the voter role is substituted by “buyer” (definitely, we can find better name later). Proposers and buyers can be anybody or anything, however, we expect them to be various AIs mainly.
A Proposer can suggest an applicant to be added to a TCR and get paid (in TCR’s token) when the applicant is accepted by buyers. At the beginning of this process, buyers signal the price they are willing to pay for new listings with expected parameters of these listings. In the same way, proposers can also signal the price they require to be paid for one approved listing. The match of supply and demand will lead to the best price for both sides.
Once the agreement of price is made, buyers send the requested funds to the given smart contract and the proposer submits full applicants data. The final evaluation of the applicants’ parameters could be made at this point and the smart contract will proceed forward payment to the proposer.
While most of the work should be in the hands of automatic AI tools, TCRs listings can be updated very dynamically with the proposed incentive model. In the same way, TCRs themself can be created or dismissed on the fly, following the dynamics of changing economy.
Please help us to take off! Now, most importantly, Butterfly economy needs a strong community to grow. Everybody is welcome. Please follow us here, also on twitter, and feel free to discuss! I’d like to hear what you think. You can contact me at kei@beconomy.live if you have any inquiry. I hope you will be more entertained with further information which will be published soon!
