In these days, one of the biggest problems for us as individuals is access to information. Don't get me wrong, the issue is not actually a lack of information, the real problem is being able to access the "correct" information within the sea of misinformation.
How can one access accurate information?
When we look at the process of disseminating accurate information to the masses, we can identify three stages:
Sharing of information by individuals
Verification (confirmation) of the information by impartial individuals
Presentation and discovery of the information to wider audiences.
The platform created by communities: Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a very good example of community-based knowledge sharing. It is a very thorough platform, with references and as unbiased an approach as possible. But is it perfect? Of course not. What are the issues?
First of all, Wikipedia is a volunteer organization. Therefore, it is constantly in financial trouble (I think almost everyone who uses Wikipedia has seen the donation requests made by its founder at certain intervals). It is difficult to say that they have created a sustainable economic model.
Also, to have an article on Wikipedia, one must meet a certain credibility criterion, which is quite vague. On the other hand, there is a small (approximately 500) community of content creators. This situation leads to criticisms that they are quite small and sometimes open to manipulation. All of these cause Wikipedia to occupy a very small area in the vast sea of information on the internet.
What can Web3 bring?
At this point, the communities that emerge with the Web3 world can provide a solution to the problems we mentioned above. How?
The new formations of the Web3 world, which we call decentralized autonomous structures, are replacing the old company structure. These structures primarily provide technical and social coordination in the digital world, allowing communities to unite around a specific mission. Beyond volunteerism, their token systems allow community members to share in the created economy.
Golden Protocol
One of the startups in this field is Golden Protocol. The protocol, which recently raised $40 million from famous names such as a16z, one of the big funds in crypto, and modern thinker Balaji Srinivasan, is actually a Web3 initiative founded in 2019. They started to move towards Web3 by realizing that the solution to the problem they were trying to solve was in the community. Golden Protocol is a platform that dreams of bringing together decentralized, permissionless, and accepted information in a standardized way. They aim to use the power of the community in information acquisition, verification, and monetization. In short, it is possible to think of it as a much larger version of Wikipedia, a categorized version of Google, or a mashup designed for assets of The Graph Protocol, which is a platform for indexing and analyzing data on top of blockchain.
How does the system work?
Actually, the system's operation is not that complicated. There are three actors using the platform: content providers, validators, and customers.
The system is based on the principles of game theory, and relies on these actors coming together around a certain truth. Tokens are used to incentivize correct usage and punish those who provide or validate false information. Customers contribute to finding the truth (or evolving towards it) through their feedback and dynamic pricing. All transactions and, in the future, all information generated, are kept on the blockchain.
Now, let's take a closer look at each of the players.
Content Providers
Content providers enter the triplet information into the system, as we mentioned before. However, there is an important condition here: they need to pledge a protocol token during the information entry. If the content proposal is accepted, they earn a reward in tokens and increase their reputation score. Conversely, if the proposal is rejected, there is a penalty; they may lose the pledged tokens and decrease their reputation score. Each entity has an NFT, and the accepted proposal is added to that NFT (if there is no NFT associated with the entity, a new one is created and the triplet becomes the first element of the new NFT). These NFTs distribute revenue to content providers and validators when customers use the information.
Validators
Validators, randomly selected by the platform, must lock a certain amount of tokens before approving the entered content. There must be a consensus for the content to be approved. As in content creation, if the validator votes in parallel with the general consensus, they earn tokens and increase their reputation score. If they vote in the opposite direction, the tokens they locked are burned and they suffer a reputation loss.
Customers
Customers are expected to create data credits by buying and burning golden tokens. With the credit they create, customers have the right to use the content in a copyrighted manner. Here, 30% of the money paid by the customer goes to the protocol, and the remaining 70% goes to the content producers and validators.
By the way, it should be noted that the system for which corporate customers will pay for the information used will be free for individual users.
Conclusion
Sharing, verifying, and discovering information has become vitally important in the information age we live in due to the pollution we are exposed to. Our current tools are insufficient. This situation could create a great new use case for the Web3 world that sustains active user participation with economic incentives. In this sense, the Golden Protocol presents an interesting model. There are certainly many obstacles ahead, but it is still seen as a venture worth carefully following.