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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

#61

Post by wyattpeak »

lkdjjdjjjdskjd wrote: post #33
benj111 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can still be fraud, even if its 'maybe get rich'. If they misrepresent the risks, if they issue more tokens than what they said, that's all fraud. "you may get back less than you put in" isn't carte blanche to fleece the investors.

Sure - but what indication is there that they made false promises?

The direct claim of Jay Cassano. "Civil repeatedly promised the tokens would be worth at least 75 cents. I have the documents to prove it."

Once again, no idea if this is true. But suggesting there's no indication is disingenuous.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

timoth3y wrote: post #22
celdon25 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if the projects are all run by greedy grubby fraudsters. While that is often the case, there are plenty out there who are working day and night on a bare bones income, to keep their projects alive through the market crash. Sometimes, that involves pivoting from a head-in-the-clouds decentralized pipe dream in favor of a viable business, even with customers from outside the industry. Yes, even they are…

> You say that as if the projects are all run by greedy grubby fraudsters I think you are reading in something that is not there. I have several friends who have run successful ICOs and they all sincerely believe in their vision and all are working very hard. However, the fact that yet another an ICO-backed token economy has not developed as pitched is not really news. My point was that it would be news if a token ec…

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by lkdjjdjjjdskjd »

wyattpeak wrote: post #61
lkdjjdjjjdskjd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - but what indication is there that they made false promises?

The direct claim of Jay Cassano. "Civil repeatedly promised the tokens would be worth at least 75 cents. I have the documents to prove it." Once again, no idea if this is true. But suggesting there's no indication is disingenuous.

But unless it is written down in contract? I don't know - why would anybody take the token "because it will be worth at least 75 cents", instead of 75 cents? I find it hard to imagine how to spin such a scheme, in an age of ICOs and crypto hype, without people being aware of the risks?

I still think it is like startup options: people have to learn that if they want to earn x, they should put it into the contract, and not be satisfied with a vague promise of possible riches in the future.

It is so basic that I find it hard to sympathize.

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

#64

Post by logifail »

decentralised wrote: post #54
icebraining wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

>> What cryptocurrencies can do is create a layer of abstraction between account owners and accounts /wallets

Except it appears that every refugee in the camp is going to have to register if they want to register to receive and exchange tokens for food, and everyone is going to be allocated funds via tokens (weekly? monthly? there must be some cycle), so there's basically no deniability at all, and the abstraction is pretty much worthless.

Once your hypothetical insurgant has sourced a $5 wrench, what's to stop them grabbing anyone in the camp on the day tokens are distributed, marching over to the food distribution point, and "helping" the token holder make the required withdrawal?

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

#66

Post by decentralised »

sparkzilla wrote: post #59
decentralised wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on the voting mechanism and game theory.

Starting with the game theory: If the TCR shows a specific bias (ie: political inclination) or some form of censorship, less people will want to own the token because the "fairness" promise is broken and that should reduce the token price.

If the curated items (newsrooms in this case) have low adoption (few people use tokens to purchase viewing rights) then the tokens will lose value too.

For token holders this should motivate them to be judicious in their curation efforts.

The voting mechanism also plays a significant part on the whole system. Traditional TCRs use a partial lock commit reveal scheme that allows us to find the Schelling point for a challenge.

Personally I'm quite partial to other voting systems that reduce the impact of token ownership disparity like the one Glen Weyl, Buterin and others have called "Liberal Radical" and its simpler root the quadratic voting mechanism. The way this works is that only the square root of voter's balance counts as voter's voting "weight". So 1 vote costs 1 token but 2 votes cost 4 tokens and those with less "power" have a higher representation relative to their balances.

edit: typos

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

#67

Post by decentralised »

logifail wrote: post #64
decentralised wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

>> What cryptocurrencies can do is create a layer of abstraction between account owners and accounts /wallets Except it appears that every refugee in the camp is going to have to register if they want to register to receive and exchange tokens for food, and everyone is going to be allocated funds via tokens (weekly? monthly? there must be some cycle), so there's basically no deniability at all, and the abstraction is…

In the case with the camp, the retina scan is required to "access" the tokens but that's a specific operational requirement. There isn't much you can buy other than food there.

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

#68

Post by anongraddebt »

sparkzilla wrote: post #60
anongraddebt wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Effectively, yes. However, assuming they implemented something with (and I can't believe I'm using this term) checks-and-balances, and also didn't give reader-investors too much voting power, then maybe it works out alright? I have no clue.

The only real rebuttal to your point is that journalists have effectively always been censored, to a degree, as the market so demands. Assange is perhaps the least censored, if not totally censor-free, but I'm not sure his model of censorship-free journalism is particularly scalable.

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

#69

Post by logifail »

decentralised wrote: post #67
logifail wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> What cryptocurrencies can do is create a layer of abstraction between account owners and accounts /wallets Except it appears that every refugee in the camp is going to have to register if they want to register to receive and exchange tokens for food, and everyone is going to be allocated funds via tokens (weekly? monthly? there must be some cycle), so there's basically no deniability at all, and the abstraction is…

In the case with the camp, the retina scan is required to "access" the tokens but that's a specific operational requirement. There isn't much you can buy other than food there.

You may think you are preventing a secondary market in the tokens themselves by means of the retina scan, but once the tokens are exchanged for goods it's almost inevitable that a secondary market will develop (prisoners use anything from noodles[0] to cans of tuna fish[1] as their 'currency').

There will also be theft, it just will be of goods, not tokens.

A cynic might think that the NGOs and governments will just dismiss these issues as the refugees' problem. "We saw that all funds were distributed to the correct recipient. because blockchain!"

Life will find a way. It's not always the way you expect.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/22/ramen-prison... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2016/aug/23/wh...

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

#70

Post by sparkzilla »

decentralised wrote: post #66
sparkzilla wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Depends on the voting mechanism and game theory. Starting with the game theory: If the TCR shows a specific bias (ie: political inclination) or some form of censorship, less people will want to own the token because the "fairness" promise is broken and that should reduce the token price. If the curated items (newsrooms in this case) have low adoption (few people use tokens to purchase viewing rights) then the tokens…

I don't think the voting mechanism is the problem. The problem is the humans who vote. For example, let's say that Civil attracts 10 publications to its platform, all of which are liberal leaning (which seems to be the case). So, when a conservative newsroom wants to join, what do you think will happen?

The Civil Constitution [1] has no guarantee of freedom of speech. Instead they say they are "committed to the ethical practice of journalism," which is open to be arbitrarily abused by the majority of voters, irrespective of the voting system.

I don't actually understand why there is any voting at all.

The author of the original article says he believes that Civil's leadership has 'good intentions" but if they can't understand that their system will not solve the problems they set out to solve, then perhaps they don't deserve to gain the funding and attention they have actually managed to get.

[1]https://docs.google.com/document/d/178BBxXh60bEsFN5E5AYaZnej...

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