Any teams interested in exploring this idea, let’s chat!
TLDR: reputation-based content network that starts off looking like “Kickstarter for truth / stories”
The idea is to create an easy way for a community to fund deep research projects – blockchain is used for 1) reputation management, so people can track their successes (and failures) across multiple platforms, and 2) fundraising, both in terms of accepting crypto and more importantly in providing tradable value to supporters in the form of NFTs that show the causes you’ve supported!
MVP flow below:
OPs stake their reputation, seed the pool, then open up to community members to stake funds and support various kinds of truth-finding missions: explaining complex topics, disambiguating between different news sources, deep dive research, etc.
Each person that joins the pool gets an auto-generated NFT based on how early or late they joined the pool – and the amount they contributed. These NFTs can later be used as access tokens into chat rooms, events, etc. but their primary purpose will be as digital collectibles showing off the different causes the owner has supported. If someone misses out on supporting a specific cause, they can “contribute” to it by buying one of these original NFTs off the original funders, essentially “supporting the supporters”.
OP takes the time needed to execute the research then posts online for everyone to see. Future visitors can show appreciation by tipping OP to receive a very basic NFT or buying one of the cooler first series ones off an original supporter.
Potential future features:
Put content behind an unlock-protocol.com-style pay-gate that requires a tip, subscription, or NFT ownership before displaying
Use the platform to source and pay team members for each project (writers, reporters on the ground, etc) and give them a % of the pool directly
Flow a % of tips back to NFT owners
Show “top stories” as most staked, most tipped, most secondary market NFT activity, etc.
I’m very interested in the long term of this idea and I’m working with some doctors (askco19.com) on a CoVID-19 case use of similar idea (Pandemic Patch) in the underlying structure. We began working on it during the 3rd Cadence Cup which is why I’m so behind on the Kitty Vortex. The CK integration will be one of the first NFTs that we’ll use for rewards. There are some great areas of difference between our two ideas. Yet, the end result is much the same: reward truth spreaders with tokens.
Thanks for linking to that tweet. I think a startup such as this has the potential to empower and engage individuals by making it easier and yet more intentional to find the information they need or want to know about a topic. While it was a bit of a different angle, it reminds me a bit of what seemed to be the spirit or intention behind the recently shuttered Civil project (https://civil.co/).
It’s been awhile since I kept up with what was happening with Civil, so I’m not sure if their closure was largely due to difficulties launching their own token or if there were other stumbling blocks. But seeing what parts of their model did or did not resonate with potential users may provide some good insight.
Of course, there are many points in which, I think, this idea is unique from and may be more successful than Civil. Namely, the focus is broader than just journalism. People might want to support deep research projects for other reasons in addition to the news/journalism aspect. I also like the integration of NFTs as a way of building pride in the communities/research people support while also having the potential to reward that early support through special access and to provide support for early supporters through sales to other later supporters if they choose.
Love the idea, quite ambitious for the capstone project, I guess that’s why nobody has picked up on this great idea.
I’m intrigued what you have in mind for designing this aspect of the platform:
A bonding curve similar to Unisocks?
Our team is already working on a project that addresses how to incentivize such a pool and quantify (and gamify!) how to fairly reward both time and amount of contribution… (think auction / price discovery)
Our capstone project has a different focus of application but there are many possibile variants and suitable usecases that we’ve been exploring and plan to develop in parallel, crowdfunding being one of the most exciting.
