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Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

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Re: Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

#51

Post by decentralised »

logifail wrote: post #49
logifail wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The infrastructure of iris scanners and computers already exists in refugee camps (I'm genuinely curious) what kind of coverage across the globe are we talking about here? Things have obviously come a long way, it's not that long ago that the UNHCR was talking about "water, sanitation and hygiene". More infrastructure questions: does the system also require a working internet connection? If so, when the internet c…

If you're not working directly on the chain, because there's no internet connection, how do you deal with double-spending attacks?

The sort of off-chain processing I mentioned requires the wallets / holders to enter a special smart-contract (state-channels) that locks their tokens. Think of it as a having a tab at a bar where the barman keeps track of your orders and at some point may tell you the tab is closed and you don't have any credit left. In fact that very method was used recently in a festival here in the Netherlands (https://blog.loyalgarden.co/running-a-live-festival-on-crypt...)

Double-spends can only be securely verified once the transaction is processed on-chain but keeping track of nonces and signatures can be done with a secondary (off-chain) system which is easy to do with a limited population.

The Suntainers we built have WiFi and GSM included so that transactions can be relayed along the ground network.

Re: Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

#52

Post by icebraining »

decentralised wrote: post #34
logifail wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> ETH is used outside of the blockchain ecosystem This claim seems a stretch. How can you not require the basic elements of a "blockchain ecosystem" to be in place in order to actually exchange vouchers based on ETH for food? >> by giving [refugees] cryptocurrency-based vouchers that could be redeemed in participating markets. Can anyone explain what value was specifically added to this project by basing these vouch…

The problem is moving money into war zones in a way that is immune to theft and abuse. The vouchers are 100% digital and unique.

How do they solve the $5 wrench problem?

Re: Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

#53

Post by decentralised »

logifail wrote: post #50
decentralised wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there is no form of digital good that is incorruptible and unfalsifiable that is not blockchain-based.

Someone else just suggested that we ought not to "let perfect get in the way of improvement". The way this discussion is going I can't help but think of Ernesto Sirolli's talk[0] To put it another way, are the refugees themselves demanding "incorruptible and unfalsifiable", or are they actually just hungry? [0] https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someo...

The refugees just want to go back home and be with their loved ones.

The demand for a unfalsifiable and incorruptible digital record comes from the NGOs and government organisations who want to make sure their funds are being used to feed the needy not the insurgents that often get into the camps.

I have only a partial view of what life is like in one such camp. What I'm told and have seen to some extent is that people who are in such a fragile position trust no one and will act on their basic survival instincts, which sometimes makes the life of those trying to help them very hard.

What I'm trying to say is that if we sent dollars into the camp, you have no idea what people would do for them...

Re: Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

#54

Post by decentralised »

icebraining wrote: post #52
decentralised wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is moving money into war zones in a way that is immune to theft and abuse. The vouchers are 100% digital and unique.

How do they solve the $5 wrench problem?

Have a look at this list, number 15 will surprise you :-)

https://github.com/jpantunes/awesome-cryptoeconomics#attacks

There is nothing a blockchain can do to prevent a stray bullet from harming you or a wrench breaking your knees. What cryptocurrencies can do is create a layer of abstraction between account owners and accounts /wallets, so individuals have plausible deniability and the chance to make a run for it. It's slightly better than a pin or password protected card that you must carry with you.

Re: Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

#55

Post by anongraddebt »

notahacker wrote: post #44
riffraff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't journalists always run their own newspaper? In Italy we had cooperatives running newspapers and magazines as long as I can remember, doesn't this happen elsewhere? I _think_ the advantage of Civil might be that you get to pay directly a journalist rather than the group, but I'm not sure it's a big improvement.

To pay journalists directly there are platforms where you can already pay directly for the article (Blendle), plenty of blogging platforms and new media startups than pay journalists at least in part by page impressions/revenues, and online tipjars. Whether these clickbait factor or article quality depends on the journalist and audience as well as the model, but all of these approaches seem much closer to the ideal o…

Blendle is in Beta, which means people are just now coming up with revenue models that only charge customers for the articles they want to read, and allow them to do this across different outlets.

The unique (not that this is good or useful) thing about purchasing CVL tokens is that it allows you not only to pay for the articles you want to read, but allows you to vote on how the Civil constitution is applied and thus how existing and newly formed newsrooms are shaped as well as affording you the opportunity to start your own newsroom (I think, not certain about this).

My explanation here and my explanation above doesn't in fact explain much of anything. Again, assuming blockchain/[insert buzzword] has wings, we won't really understand much of the how or why until clear use cases begin to dominate.

When Morse was trying to convince Congress to fund his endeavors, it was only after the second attempt they just gave him some money to make him go away (though, there were a couple Congressmen who really pushed for supporting him). When Morse had a telegraph line constructed in D.C. and running north (40 miles?), people still didn't understand the how when a message could be sent by telegraph faster than by a messenger sent south on the train. People still didn't grasp the why until criminals that previously had used the trains to elude police, began to get caught. Even then, it was still difficult to understand because it stood outside their conceptual framework for understanding/interpreting the world.

Not that the crypto stuff actually has wings. I'm emphatically agnostic.

Re: Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

#56

Post by logifail »

decentralised wrote: post #53
logifail wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone else just suggested that we ought not to "let perfect get in the way of improvement". The way this discussion is going I can't help but think of Ernesto Sirolli's talk[0] To put it another way, are the refugees themselves demanding "incorruptible and unfalsifiable", or are they actually just hungry? [0] https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someo...

The refugees just want to go back home and be with their loved ones. The demand for a unfalsifiable and incorruptible digital record comes from the NGOs and government organisations who want to make sure their funds are being used to feed the needy not the insurgents that often get into the camps. I have only a partial view of what life is like in one such camp. What I'm told and have seen to some extent is that peop…

>> NGOs and government organisations [..] want to make sure their funds are being used to feed the needy not the insurgents that often get into the camps

Won't the insurgents just take from the needy, once the needy have had their iris scanned and redeemed their "unfalsifiable and incorruptible digital record"?

Someone's already mentioned the $5 wrench up-thread...

Re: Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

#57

Post by anongraddebt »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #38
anongraddebt wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I still have close to no idea what DLT/Crypto/Decentralization/etc. even is, or rather is for. Assuming the tech actually has wings we won't really understand the how and why until certain use cases come to dominate. Even then, it can be difficult. After Western Union was founded (19th century), people would walk into WU offices to send money over the telegraph line and say things like, "Where can I see the lit…

Why send them tokens and not real money? Especially if one has to spend real money to get the tokens in the first place...

The tokens allow you to do more than simply pay journalists. Something to do with how the Civil constitution is applied and how new newsrooms are created. That's what I gleaned from the whitepaper. I could clearly be wrong about this.

Crypto whitepapers, even read charitably, are difficult to interpret and not because what is being said is too complex or something.

Re: Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

#58

Post by decentralised »

logifail wrote: post #56
decentralised wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The refugees just want to go back home and be with their loved ones. The demand for a unfalsifiable and incorruptible digital record comes from the NGOs and government organisations who want to make sure their funds are being used to feed the needy not the insurgents that often get into the camps. I have only a partial view of what life is like in one such camp. What I'm told and have seen to some extent is that peop…

>> NGOs and government organisations [..] want to make sure their funds are being used to feed the needy not the insurgents that often get into the camps Won't the insurgents just take from the needy, once the needy have had their iris scanned and redeemed their "unfalsifiable and incorruptible digital record"? Someone's already mentioned the $5 wrench up-thread...

The insurgents will take anything they can get their hands on, but the vouchers are attached to each account holder and there's no "transfer" mechanism for a secondary market so you either register voluntarily and have a retina scan or you're out of the system.

Not an ideal solution for us perhaps, but given the context I assure you no other solution was even remotely adequate.

Re: Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

#59

Post by sparkzilla »

decentralised wrote: post #40
spacecowboy17 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! """with a type of "paywall" that requires a payment in civ tokens""" In my opinion this is the most important part. Why would the Civil paywall work better than a non cryptocurrency based paywall? Especially, if they want to accept regular payments as well? They seem to be focusing on the wrong problem - how to govern a registry of news sources. While the real problem is how to get readers to pay for content.

My pleasure! I think the idea is that people feel that news sources can't be trusted in general so don't want to pay for access to a "news" article in particular. The idea of the registry is then to represent social validation by a community incentivised by their own selfish best interests (ie the token would appreciate hence they can resell for a profit...) to be accurate and judicious about their curation efforts.…

> The idea of the registry is then to represent social validation by a community incentivised by their own selfish best interests

This just leads to censorship by the most powerful users in the system.

Re: Civil’s tokenomics has left its journalists wondering where their salary is

#60

Post by sparkzilla »

anongraddebt wrote: post #55
notahacker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To pay journalists directly there are platforms where you can already pay directly for the article (Blendle), plenty of blogging platforms and new media startups than pay journalists at least in part by page impressions/revenues, and online tipjars. Whether these clickbait factor or article quality depends on the journalist and audience as well as the model, but all of these approaches seem much closer to the ideal o…

Blendle is in Beta, which means people are just now coming up with revenue models that only charge customers for the articles they want to read, and allow them to do this across different outlets. The unique (not that this is good or useful) thing about purchasing CVL tokens is that it allows you not only to pay for the articles you want to read, but allows you to vote on how the Civil constitution is applied and thu…

>[The token] allows you to vote on how the Civil constitution is applied and thus how existing and newly formed newsrooms are shaped.

In other words, censorship is embedded in the platform.

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