Cash, Privacy, & Digital Social Primitives

"There is a reason why people used cash to transact. It was private and only the two parties engaging in the transaction knew about it."

   ~ Michael J. Casey, 'Privacy is Vital to Crypo - and the Global Economy'

While what Michael J. Casey wrote may be true, in addition to privacy, cash also made it easier - by orders of magnitude - for anyone to earn a living by being paid in cash, instead of an unwieldy commodity for example, by simply doing something for someone who had cash. By extension it was likewise much easier for someone with cash to attract a larger group of potential workers for whatever task they needed to have carried out.

That said, a key shortcoming when it came to cash was, and still is, it's fundamental lack of force or ability to guarantee that the exchange of cash in advance of services rendered brings about the expected outcome or that a cash payment following services rendered is really made.

So, societies developed social constructs to help enforce transactions such as: legal systems and contracts, banks, bonding requirements, escrow transactions, degrees, certifications, CVs, identification cards and so on. All of these pre-digital third-party institutions, rules and social proofs served as proxies for trust; the same trust that cash intrinsically lacked.

Now though, the world has just recently been introduced to cryptocurrencies, which are (for some at least) not only intrinsically trustless, but they allow for trust to actually be programmed on top of them in the form of automated smart contracts.

But without sufficient privacy in the form of fungibility in money, or to borrow Michael's clear prose, "...[the] unspoken agreement between market participants that information about a product's history is not only hidden but is actually lost," money loses its "moneyness."

Or so goes a major critique of cryptocurrency as currency, at least as of today.

This critique applies to the many individuals who connect to traditional institutions like banks to either buy cryptocurrency/tokens or convert them into fiat. Where the critique falls apart though, is when individuals open a virgin digital wallet and *earn* cryptocurrency (e.g. on a site like beta.cent.co).

In other words, when cryptocurrency remains as digital money, when it is exchanged natively (i.e. over the internet either via a smart contract or between parties who utilize digital wallets) its "moneyness" is just as good as the paper kind, with the added benefit of being able to be sent to anyone that is able to send or receive digital messages, anywhere (including space).

When it comes to earning money today, whether it be our next job in real life or over the internet, it is implicitly assumed that we will get paid by way of one or many or all of the pre-digital third-party institutions, rules and social proofs mentioned above. To keep things simple, I think that because of that implicit assumption, most people are trying to insert those pre-digital third-party institutions, rules and social proofs into and on top of the fundamentally new and different digitally native crypto-worlds that are unfolding upon the digital universe. To me, however, that seems a bit like if someone from 19th century Philadelphian high society ventured into the lawless Wild West expecting to be able to force Victorian era modes and manners of living upon everyone and everything.

Instead, what I envision as being a more likely early outcome is this: across these new crypto-worlds, digitally native reputation based on some human aspect that is either impossible to account for and keep track of now, or simply not valued that highly by society - or some combination of the two - will begin to manifest and become the first key, digital social primitive on top of which an unimaginable future will arise.

This reputation will be portable and provable to anyone, and will become the universally attainable, clear and straightforward key to earning a living in the digital realm. As an illustrative example of how that would happen and what it may look like, let me take Cent as an example, and project out onto its current reality a few eminently reasonable hypothetical changes. [Note: if you are unfamiliar with Cent, please go through some of my previous posts, or at the very least please read [this article] before reading further]

Let's imagine that the work-based bounties, or the bounties set mainly by businesses and organizations seeking some minimum number of workers to sincerely complete surveys, take polls, or some other series of simple, straightforward digital work, that are already appearing on Cent today become a real thing. All of a sudden tens of thousands of dollars begin to pour into the platform in the form of bounties. But there is a quality control problem: Since any Centian (Cent user) is able to reply and sort responses to any bounty, the quality of responses and accurate verification of those responses - to say nothing of the total number of responses - is simply far, far below the expectations of what the businesses and organizations are expecting.

So what's Cent to do? First they identify the facts. A small segment of active Centians has been consistently responding to work-based bounties sincerely. Another segment of users respond sincerely, but selectively to work-based bounties. A larger portion of users respond sincerely to semi-formal and playful bounties regularly, and the remainder are sporadic responders or low quality responders.

After identifying these groups, Cent leadership decides to restrict the ability to respond to and evaluate responses to work-based bounty posts to the group of users who have demonstrated "regular and consistent sincerity" across previous bounties on the platform. As a practical example, Cent could say that only users who were in the top 10 of at least three bounty post responses over the last 3 months, which let's say is a small number of only around 400 or so users, will be able to participate in and earn money from work-based bounties.

Put yourself in the shoes of a CEO from one of the nearly 75,000 blockchain startups operating on not simply a small budget, but with an even smaller network and even fewer precious seconds to waste - a couple hunderd dollars here or there for feedback or product testing or whatever carried out nearly instantaneously by fifty to several hunderd reliably sincere responders is a no brainer.

And so very soon these Centians begin to earn hundreds of dollars *a day*. Mind you, all this money, in the form of bounties and user earnings, is visible to all users. So you better believe the responses and curation of the semi-formal and playful bounties rapidly impoves in terms of quality and sincerity as everyone vies for the chance to become a Centurion and earn some serious money.

It's key not to forget that while the money of the work-based bounties may be attractive, the work is pure work. And as pure work it is draining. The semi-formal and playful bounties, by contrast, are not just fun but they are constructive as well in a creatice, social, and financial way. If regular users are able "prove themselves" (i.e. that they are capable of consistently providing sincere responses) by having fun, then Centurions simply continue to prove themselves across each work-based bounty and then have fun.

Over time the types of work-based bounties will probably change. Just as there is demand for educated "specialists," so to the demand for Centurions with very specific reputations and reputation patters (i.e. the history of their performance within the various crypto-worlds) as more and more complex work is able to be carried out digitally. If work-based bounties become more complex, it would only be natural that the semi-formal and playful bounties become more niche and complex. I'm imagining something like a Reddit-esque site but with some unimaginable twist...where Centurions will come to blow off steam and socialize - almost like a bar, except they get paid and continue to prove themselves.

If you've followed me to this point, thank you. Bounties are nothing new, and there are mutliple bounty networks besides Cent that are trying to grow their businesses today. Where Cent distinguishes itself as something completely different from everything else, is in the incentivized social network that has formed around it and proven itself as being something that is genuinely delightful and enjoyable.

Pairing that with the traditional work-based bounties, allows Cent to actually grow a pool of passionate and dedicated workers whose growing numbers helps improve and make the site more and more valuable for everyone else. And it is out of this growing pool of workers that I have caught the first glimpse of that first provable, digital social primitive: a reputation for sincerity that individuals can build for themselves without having to rely on any pre-digital third-party institutions, rules and social proofs.