Detailed Plan
Based on some initial feedback I have tried to make the idea a bit clearer
Our goal is to explore how to increase open collaboration and evolution of knowledge. We know evolving knowledge is crucial for helping us navigate change. In particular, we would like to explore the impact of receiving recognition (NFT) and in the future perhaps a reward (token) for contributing to the evolution of common knowledge.
We have created an online space (guides.co) for people to explore and collaborate on common (contextual) knowledge. People are already sharing this knowledge in live documents (a guide). Currently each guide has 1 owner and a number of admins with edit rights, plus many users contributing comments and reflections to that guide. However the problem we see is that over time the evolution of the content significantly drops in these guides (even where we are sure the content could be still relevant).
We’ve identified that a problem is that having only 1 author is counter productive for creating a perception of shared ownership (“why should I help if it mostly benefits him/her?’). Of course the underlying assumption is that if you share ownership over something you invest more time in it and take better care of it. A first step would be to experiment with displaying multiple owners in a guide (see mock up attached), including designing and testing a process for becoming a co-owner. With thousands of guides and counting doing this at scale requires a decentralised and trusted process. This is where we think NFTs can play a big role.
A guide as NFT - shared ownership: Become a partial owner of the guide you have contributed to.
Every document (guide) is a unique NFT with every meaningful contributor being awarded a fraction of the ownership. As more people contribute the guide becomes richer and more ‘valuable’ and thus your part becomes more valuable. Contributing to different guides allows you to own parts of many NFTs. A user would build up a ‘wallet’/portfolio of NFTs.
This project would explore 2 phases, where 1 lays the ground work for 2.
Phase 1
1a. How shared ownership should be experience most effectively, design and UI
1b. Design a collaboration process resulting in shared ownership that can be translated into an algorithm which can be repeated at scale
UX/UI Designer & Developer: $20.000
Phase 2
2a. A prototype to mint an NFT for each guide
2b Combining the collaboration process with awarding fractal ownership of an NFT
Design & development: $20.000
Project Management: $10.000
Total: $50.000
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Success after:
3 Months: Shared ownership design & experience, and a prototype of the contribution process that results in co-ownership
6 Months: Test the collaboration process at scale, and build a working prototype to mint a guide as an NFT and award ownership based on the contribution process.
12 months: Phase 2 of the project?
If there is time & budget left we would also like to explore the next phases in the project, such a as how NFT ownership could also lead to financial rewards. Next steps following this prototype could be connecting a KYC, testing the prototype at scale, integrate with a wallet, and making it available to all users.
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Why we need a different kind of space to share knowledge? There are places online where people share knowledge, but these assume a question always has the same answer (wikipedia/wikihow), it’s cloudy where knowledge comes from or repetitive (forums), limited in scope and application (not contextual), and/or don’t reward the contributor (wikihow).
What we think is missing is a place to navigate change together. We think if we can crack the link contributions-recognition - reward while leaving intrinsic motivation intact, open-collaboration could get a serious boost. Doing this project openly here and with the community allows us to share our experience with others so they can build on it and get a head start.
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Why we think this will help the Cardano ecosystem? This project would explore how blockchain technology could help a relatively complex real world issue at scale (collaboration & shared ownership). It would also lay the first stepping stones for how this could link to more advanced applications of smart contracts such as DAOs. Either way we think it is definitely something very different from art or property NFTs.
Keen to hear your thoughts!