Trust is what is broken in our systems. Name one that you trust. Government? Academia? Science? Medicine? Food?
Any system that is centralized is corruptible and thus easy to corrupt. Decentralized trust is what amazon and eBay and Etsy use to pair sellers and buyers. Peer-to-peer trust.
We have written about this several times.
Two ideas we really like are trust tokens - so like crypto that you can only give away, and each person has a limited amount to give away each month. Or badges that mix IRL (In Real Life) with URL (digital life). So for example, if we meet in person we give each other a digital badge and leave a review. You could also have specialized badges such as "went to school together," "worked together," "trained jiu jitsu together," "did business together," etc.
Trust is nuanced. BUT super important.
We are so interested in it because we build collective intelligence systems, and collective intelligence (group problem solving) improves with higher trust.
Another way to have trust is "skin in the game."
Side note, you focused a little on anonymity, but at the core of peer to peer trust is one thing: vulnerability. If you want to build trust with someone, some level of vulnerability is required. Therefore an anonymous person - rightfully so - should have a more difficult time building trust than someone who uses their real name. We like the idea of a platform where people use our real names. Maybe not for everyone, but for the problem we are solving which is group problem solving at large scales. Called collective "swarm" intelligence.
This is exactly right.
Trust is what is broken in our systems. Name one that you trust. Government? Academia? Science? Medicine? Food?
Any system that is centralized is corruptible and thus easy to corrupt. Decentralized trust is what amazon and eBay and Etsy use to pair sellers and buyers. Peer-to-peer trust.
We have written about this several times.
Two ideas we really like are trust tokens - so like crypto that you can only give away, and each person has a limited amount to give away each month. Or badges that mix IRL (In Real Life) with URL (digital life). So for example, if we meet in person we give each other a digital badge and leave a review. You could also have specialized badges such as "went to school together," "worked together," "trained jiu jitsu together," "did business together," etc.
Trust is nuanced. BUT super important.
We are so interested in it because we build collective intelligence systems, and collective intelligence (group problem solving) improves with higher trust.
Another way to have trust is "skin in the game."
Side note, you focused a little on anonymity, but at the core of peer to peer trust is one thing: vulnerability. If you want to build trust with someone, some level of vulnerability is required. Therefore an anonymous person - rightfully so - should have a more difficult time building trust than someone who uses their real name. We like the idea of a platform where people use our real names. Maybe not for everyone, but for the problem we are solving which is group problem solving at large scales. Called collective "swarm" intelligence.
Here is our most recent article on trust, and we have a ton of overlap: https://joshketry.substack.com/p/keep-ai-and-bots-out-of-our-systems?utm_source=publication-search
Best,
Josh