Decentralized Sources of Truth

Voters do not always vote in their own best interest. The monetary incentive scheme being developed is a great start, but it is not enough.

Voters would have a de facto dApp/website they could visit to conduct research. It would present information in varying modalities, for all

• Creation of a dApp that:

• Serves as a repository and curation platform for content about Cardano. Hosted content should be of multiple modalities (text, video, audio, etc.)
• Allows users to verify accuracy of information via links to primary sources

• Incentivizes content creators to create or submit content that:

• is engaging and factual. It can be verified through primary sources
• is diversified so that it meets the needs of a wide range of educational levels, cognitive abilities, and cultures

• Incentivizes content consumers to:

• verify content

• Promotes education as a method to help make an informed decision
• Helps promote social incentives for voting in a manner that benefits the ecosystem to help deter the threat of future social engineering intended to harm the network

In the past decade, we have seen that the opinion of a collective group of people can be manipulated, literally steered, toward the desired conclusion of some entity through social engineering. The main driver of this is the sharing of misinformation on social media. Social media platforms profit by keeping eyes on screens, which incentivizes the platform to validate a user's confirmation bias as they are shown information they WANT to believe, but may not necessarily be true.

The objective of this challenge is NOT to come up with a solution for the sharing of misinformation on social media or to create a new decentralized social media platform. That is a big problem with big questions and seems to be outside the current scope of Project Catalyst. Instead, it is more prudent to focus on practical solutions that can be implemented in the short-term and can have an immediate impact on the community.

In this spirit, perhaps efforts towards helping individuals recognize misinformation, or giving them methods to validate information in a decentralized and trusted way is more worth our time and money. The Cardano subreddit is one of the most active cryptocurrency forums as measured by both comments and posts per user per day[1] . This recent influx of new users asking questions about the Cardano protocol and participating in the discussion on social media channels demonstrates that solutions for conveying trustworthy information for all levels of education is in high demand. It is important that methods of preventing social engineering be developed now, while the Cardano protocol is still young and in its formative years.

"Elevator Pitch"
Therefore, the objective of this proposal IS to focus on the development of a trustful method to help community members of all levels of education find, share, and verify information about Cardano that each individual can know is true. The result of this future Fund5 challenge will bring about solutions to battle misinformation designed to harm the network through education.

Major decisions about Cardano will be made by the community via its voting mechanisms. Cardano is a social experiment just as much as it is a technical one, which is why it's imperative to have mechanisms in place to help people make the best decisions possible for the health and future of the network. It will be easy to make "naive" conclusions about what may benefit the long-term health and growth of the network because:

1. voters may not be familiar with the game-theory that was initially used to develop the incentive mechanisms that were designed to facilitate trends that would lead towards long-term health of the network. In turn, voters may make decisions naively, thinking a voting proposal is in the interest of the network but, in fact, is not.
2. voters tend to make decisions myopically by focusing on short-term, personal gain as opposed to long-term network benefits.

A social engineering attack designed to leverage these two scenarios could be the first phase, an opening of the door, to a greater attack designed to damage the network or its long-term health. So, it seems reasonable that there should be a check on these two scenarios to proactively defend against threats. The systems being developed to address the two above issues, along with their drawbacks are discussed below.

Issue 1:
Voters may not be familiar with the game-theory that was initially used to develop incentive mechanisms that were designed to facilitate trends that would lead towards long-term health of the network. In turn, voters may make decisions naively, thinking a voting proposal is in the interest of the network but, in fact, is not.

Proposed Solution:
- A "Liquid Democracy" system that will allow voters to delegate their vote to an "Expert" in a manner they see fit when they feel they are not in a place to make a wise decision

Potential Drawbacks:
Currently, for the greater population of voters, the primary source of information to make a voting decision is whatever is provided by the Catalyst Voting mobile app. The information provided in the app by each proposer goes through multiple rounds of revision by community advisors, which provides rigor. As great as that process is, there will ultimately be proposals on decisions that will require knowledge that is outside the scope of an average individual's knowledge or abilities. The "Liquid Democracy" model will allow a voter to delegate their vote in this scenario.

However, the problem still stands; If an individual does independently decide that their vote needs to be delegated, an informed and educated decision still needs to be made. Whom is the individual to trust when making the decision to delegate their vote? Can the expert be trusted? The expert has an incentive to gather voting power and may say whatever is necessary to get it. The expert could put false information out there, or partner with an entity that will propagate false information in the interest of the "expert". The expert's motivation could be to intentionally do harm to the network or, even worse, may think their intentions are good, but have, in-fact, succumbed to misinformation.

Issue 2:
voters tend to make decisions myopically by focusing on short-term, personal benefits as opposed to long-term network benefits

Proposed Solution:
- Financial incentives to participate in the voting process

Potential Drawbacks:
Voters, as well as Experts, will be financially incentivized to participate in the voting process. Research shows that this will boost turnout [2]. However, this does not incentivize educated voting decisions. Voters could submit ballots by just checking off one choice, perhaps whatever is listed at the top, putting in the least effort possible to receive a reward. Another scenario; voters could checkoff all choices in the misguided thinking that they will receive more rewards with more ballots cast. Therefore, the financial incentive is not enough of a check to ensure good decision making. Greater checks can be put in place if the incentives for decision making in the short-term align with desired outcomes to protect the long-term health of the network. The preceding examples are of the extreme case; there is perhaps no way to incentivize those individuals to participate in a valuable way. But that is exactly why this challenge is so important.

This project is feasible because:

• There are similar constructs out there that already exist for sharing content. Another's business model could be used as a starting point

This project is auditable because:

• The following requirements can be used to facilitate auditability:
  Within 60 days of the close of voting for Fund5, winners of funds will publish a whitepaper outlining and describing:
• How the funds will be budgeted
• How the below would be achieved and on what timeframes:
• Creation of a dApp that:
• Serves as a repository and curation platform for content about Cardano. Hosted content should be of multiple modalities (text, video, audio, etc.)
• Allows users to verify accuracy of information via links to primary sources
• Incentivizes content creators to create or submit content that:
• is engaging and factual. It can be verified through primary sources
• is diversified so that it meets the needs of a wide range of educational levels, cognitive abilities, and cultures
• Incentivizes content consumers to:
• verify content
• Promotes education as a method to help make an informed decision
• Helps promote social incentives for voting in a manner that benefits the ecosystem to help deter the threat of future social engineering intended to harm the network

This project is impactful because:

• There is a high demand for knowledge and education about Cardano and it will only continue to grow. This project proactively reduces the potential that misconceptions and misinformation will propagate

CONCLUSION

I put this Community Choice Challenge out to the community to try to devise clever ways to possibly create extrinsic motivation for even the most extreme cases. Perhaps the solution creates a social incentive. Maybe a reputation system is developed (similar to stack exchange) to incentivize people to create and communicate accurate, high quality content. As opposed to stack exchange's votes, maybe real ADA could be spent to validate accurate, high quality content. Real ADA could be earned for the creation of content. These are just suggestions and not part of the requirements for auditability of the challenge. Again, this challenge is not intended to create a decentralized social media platform. Think more towards the direction of Wikipedia, not Twitter. I don't see my role as coming up with the solution, we should fund this challenge so we can discover what the clever Cardano community can dream up!

Sources:

• [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/comments/l73uhn/cardano_doesnt_have_the_largest_community_yet_but/
• [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/04/how-do-we-get-people-vote-lets-try-financial-incentives/

Additional Resources:

• https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/glaeser/files/democracy_final_jeg_1.pdf
• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201712/why-do-people-vote-against-their-best-interests
• https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/civics-education-helps-form-young-voters-and-activists/572299/

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