R01 Dreamcatcher

Strategic Intent

The traditional incentives for innovating are mis-aligned. This creates friction and in turn hampers the speed of Innovation. For example, typically:

1. A Cap Table will be drawn up for the main benefit for investors, incentivising them to minimise the cost of their holding and maximise share value of dividends.
2. Wages are agreed ahead of any work being done, incentivising workers to minimise the effort needed to maintain or increase that wage, and to horde their own ideas for individual benefit.
3. Inventors are incentivised to control their inventions for fear of losing out to others, e.g. with Patents, or to open up their work and seek other, secondary, forms of reward, e.g. as happens with open source where the purity of purpose is tainted.
4. Customers with valuable problems to solve either accept the compromise of off-the-shelf solutions, horde bespoke software for fear of losing the relative benefit with their competitors, and attempt to minimise their costs for both.

In each case, each actor sees the optimisation of their own returns as a zero-sum game with one or more of the other actors. Moreover, their actions are optimised for the local maxima of their own return, despite there very possibly being a higher return available as a share of the returns should the Innovation be used to its full potential. We believe that their own return at global maxima is higher than at their local maxima.

We believe that this is due to the practice of having to agree ahead of time what the relative Dispersal of benefits from the Innovation will be, and the fear that the benefit of the actual Contribution each actor makes may go elsewhere. Not only does this waste time and energy when the actual value is unknown, it restricts all from putting in the full measure of the effort that they believe the idea deserves.

No one can possibly know with certainty the value of that any particular Contribution will make.

Our intent is to solve this inefficiency by creating an Algorithmic Cap Table, where all Contributions are recorded, and where the benefits of the Innovations produced are distributed fairly and transparently based on those Contributions once there impact is actually known. We intend to do this by putting in a system of proof of ownership at a granular level and generating that Cap Table on the fly for each distribution of benefits that arise from the product or products that the Contribution was used in.

We expect, when this problem is solved, that the result will be a highly efficient and attractive Innovation environment that will outcompete traditional Innovation in terms of speed to market and the financial returns on the time and money employed.

Tactical Intent

We assume that, given the likely granularity and fidelity required, the Strategic Intent is best met by building an App on Interblock so it inherits Interblock's capabilities to provide a trusted, distributed, granular system. This App would have the following properties:

1. A method of allowing all Contributions to be recorded. I.e what was done by whom and who provided what by providing proof of ownership to that Contribution, including trading of that proof of ownership.
2. A method of assessing what the relative impact of each individual Contribution, including additional improvements as they are made over time.
3. A method that records the on-going financial value the Innovation generates for as long as it is used.
4. A method that assures Dispersal of those benefits as they become available to those who hold the proof of ownership, including any benefits arising from the sale of rights or ultimate ownership.
5. Intrinsically and actively maintains the confidence of all Users.
6. Contains within its structure the ability to change and adapt when improvements that better meet the Strategic Intent are identified.
7. A method of self governance that allows Users of the System to enter into agreements with other Users that algorithmically control parts of the System through a Contract, without the capacity to override any of the above Tactical Intents.
8. A method of publishing and advertising of problems and solutions to those problems, and Contracting between the two.
9. A method to publish and provide solutions which do not refer directly to published problems, but which can still be used by others with benefits arrising. This is expected to need the provision of an extension of the base license with detailed license conditions.
10. A method of negotiating contracts or providing licenses for:
    1. The use of solutions within other solutions (ie nesting)
    2. The use of solutions to meet or partly meet problems.
    3. The execution of solutions not yet created to meet the needs of problems.
11. A marketplace in which proofs of ownership can be traded after-market.
12. A method to provide capital in a pool, with governance agreed and enforced algorithmically, and for the use of that capital to either purchase proofs of ownership in existing solutions or to fund the development of solutions that do not yet exist. This capital pool will require integration with the contracting function and therefore with problem, solution, development, QA, publication, escrow, dispersal and reuse/improvement.

Definition of Done

1. We will know that this is done when the first 3 projects are set up and running, choosing this System over the traditional System on purely Smithian Rational Agent grounds. This would include for each project:

   1. External investment, willing to use the System as a means of return on capital employed.
   2. A team of Contributors, willing to work on a project under this System, possibly under a System whereby they reduce their call for pay in return for partial ownership of their contribution with investors.
   3. Fair attribution for contributions made to the project by authors not yet on the System, but who nevertheless are owed for their work.
   4. A customer willing to hire a team on the System, under the legal structures in place, and possibly willing to allow the asset generated to be used by others within the Contribution System described above.

2. To the satisfaction of at least 4 Users, the system allows their activities to be rolled up into Contributions, and records it in a manner where original Ownership can be proven. Specifically, this is proven by:

   1. One or more Investors willing to deploy capital into the System as part of a Contract with a User, where some or all of the Benefits of that Contribution are owed to that Investor and that Investor is content with the protection that the record provides.
   2. One or more Users who contributes permissionless Labour (ie without a Contract), and is content with the protection that the record provides in proving their ownership.
   3. The recording of external Contributions of non-Users, where QA agree that these external Contributions are not assigned to a User, and a process exists that can Attribute them to a new User in due course.
   4. The recording of activity that does not result in a gitHub Commit, but which nevertheless has made a Contribution and which other Contributors to the initial Innovation are content as being equivalent to a commit in terms of Governance.

Detailed Description

Tactical Intent 1: Recording of Contributions

In order to record all Contributions of any sort to an Innovation, the following properties are required:

Must

1. Record all work that contributes to the funding, inception, development, production and adoption of an Innovation.
2. Uniquely identify the author or entity who made that Contribution and maintain their rights and ownership of that Contribution by issuing proof of ownership to the user who generated that contribution.

Should

1. Record Contributions in a raw form, to allow future re-assessment of their actual utility.
2. Allow the results of that work to be incorporated into other Innovations while maintaining the rights of the owner (not necessarily the author if the proof of ownership has been sold) to their share of the benefits that this re-use may bring.
3. Allow for partial ownership or benefit from a Contribution between Users, e.g. for use where a Contract is in place that splits the benefit of work down between the author and another who funded that author to do the work. (Fractional ownership.)
4. Allow for the transfer of part or all of a Contributions based on a pre-agreed Contract between Users.
5. Record the use of the contribution of pre-existing solutions within new solutions, and honour the dispersal based on the contract/license agreed for it's use.

Could

1. Allow the assessment of Contributors by reference to their previous Contributions of any form, e.g. by way of an assessment of Reputation, whether good or bad.
2. Allow the assessment of contributions based on their utility, and allow the use of the terms of that assessment to be tied to contracts.
3. Allow the recording of activity that is not yet tied to a particular Innovation, but which in retrospect may be adopted within an Innovation as a Contribution.
4. Allow the recording of 'negative Contributions' - Contributions which have harmed the development of an Innovation or reduced the value of that Innovation.

Must not

1. In any way allow the record of Contributions to be lost, corrupted or changed.

Done

To the satisfaction of at least 4 Users, demonstrate that the system records all Activity that they personally believe they have carried out, that timestamps are in place, and that all 4 agree that the raw data recorded is a true and accurate reflection of their individual activity over a period of not less than 7 days.

Tactical Intent 2: Assessment of Contributions

In order to fairly assess the value of each Contribution relative to each other, we beleive the following properties are required:

Must

1. Have a method of pulling together all Contributions made at any point in time in order to build a set of Contributions that assessed can be assessed as a batch.
2. Have a method of comparing relative Contributions to generate a dynamic Cap Table for use in Dispersal.
3. Contain a workflow which records the transfer of all or partial rights and ownership of a Contribution, and which restricts the permissions of such a transfer to the current Owner, or to a Contract agreed by the Owner.

Should

1. Have a method of normalising the different types of Contribution (labour, investment, services, re-use of an existing Innovations) into a common unit in order for them to be compared directly and emperically.
2. Record at each Assessment not only the result, but the time-slice of the data being considered and the method by which it was considered, to allow independent evaluation.

Could

1. Allow for the Contribution to be re-assessed in the future, under suitable Governance control.

Must not

1. Allow for a manual or algorithmic Assessment that is not visible to the Contributors involved. (No smoke-filled back-room deals.)

Done

To the satisfaction of at least 4 Users, demonstrate that the system can recall on demand all Contributions such that it is known:

1. Which User Owns which Contribution.
2. What the content of that Contribution was.
3. What the overall state of the Innovation was at the time of the Contribution being recorded.
4. What the process or algoithm, Governance, Comments and deliberation (if any) was that allowed the activity to be accepted as a Contribution to a particular Innovation.
5. on demand provide a trace of beneficial ownership to be indelibly recorded and followed, and recreated for any particular point in time

Tactical Intent 3: Recording of Financial Value generated

In order to ensure the above-board recording of the financial value generated from an Innovation, and thereby the financial value of a Contribution, we beleive the following properties are required:

Must

1. Be able to take in payments from end Users for use of an Innovation, and which are therefore owed to the Contributors to that Innovation.
2. Be able to record second order value generated, where an Innovation is used as a sub-part of a second Innovation, and from which some part of the financial value generated by that second is owed to the first.
3. Be able to record financial value owed, where there is no payment made now, but the use is nevertheless recorded for future use if payment is made in due course.

Should

1. Be able to record metrics for the use of the Innovation which are considered as proxies for the utility of individual Contributions. E.g. record the number of times a particular section of code was used, the number of times a GUI was used, and so forth.
2. Contain a method for stipulating metrics for value generated, an algorithm for collecting those metrics and a method for presenting those metrics as a proxy for value generated, which can then be Attributed by Contribution.

Could

1. Provide a method for assessing financial value generated using methods other than those used in the settled-upon Dispersal, for the modelling of alternative Dispersal configurations.

Must not

1. Allow the tampering or removal of any information that is useful in the recording of the actual financial value generated.

Tactical Intent 4: Dispersal of Benefits

In order to assure the Dispersal of the financial benefits, we believe the following properties are required:

Must

1. A method to trigger the generation of the Algorithmic Cap Table at any point in time, typically when financial benefit is available to be Dispersed, and send what's owed from the Dispersal to the Contributors based on that table.
2. Allow beneficial ownership of a Contribution, and therefore its share of Dispersal to be transferred by the owner to another and have the Dispersal follow that chain of ownership to the current beneficiary.

Should

1. Allow the re-direction of a share of Dispersal through the sale of Rights to a Contribution to a User other than the original Owner, e.g. when geo-rights have been sold in part (Contribution) or full (Innovation.)

Could

1. Allow the person paying for the Innovation to alter the Dispersal of Benefits in a manner that they see fit, for this payment only.
2. Allow a proxy to market and sell an Innovation (with permission of the Owner), and alter the Dispersal of Benefits for payments flowing through that proxy.

Must not

1. Allow for the delay or alteration of the Dispersal without visibility of all beneficiaries to a particular Dispersal.

Tactical Intent 5: Maintenance of Confidence

In order to maintain the confidence of the Users that they are participating in a System which faithfully attempts to recreate the Strategic Intent, we believe the following properties are required:

Must

1. Allow the interaction of any two running instances of the System to interact in a manner that they are assured the conduct of the other follows the Strategic Intent, or know that no such assurance is given and therefore care must be taken.
2. Allow the source code to be auditted by any interested party for flaws and adherence to the Strategic Intent.

Should

1. Provide a method of Governance that is at all times transparent in its dealings and actions, open to scrutiny and responsive to concerns.

Could

1. Publish on-going metrics aimed at showing real-time that the network a User is currently interacting with is sound, and that the functionality can be trusted.
2. Allow issues raised with the System to be indelibally recorded and available for all, to allow Users to independently assess their confidence in the System and their confidence in the proposed fixes. I.e. nothing swept under the carpet.

Must not

1. Obscure, alter or redact any information about the System which is pertinent to a User making their judgement call as to whether or not to be confident in its operation.

Done

The operation of that system of record is accepted by at least 1 external auditor as being incapable of being lost, corrupted or changed, with the external auditor's report being recorded for all Users to inspect.

Tactical Intent 6: Self-Improvement

In order to provide the ability for the System to change and adapt when improvements are are identified, we believe the following properties are required:

Must

1. Allow permissionless improvement, and gated, transparent inclusion of those improvements to assist in patching issues as and when they occur, using the System as a platform for that improvement.
2. Make available any and all observations or issues raised as to the Systems fit with the Strategic Intent, including the operating procedures, automation and Governance.

Should

1. Provide a method of community control in which features, processes and automation should be added or retired.
2. Provide safeguards against the abuse of this openness from bad actors, including transparently recording all interactions with the Core Software development and commits of changes.

Could

1. Allow external Systems to interact with this System for independent monitoring and the addition of external supporting features.

Must not

1. Allow breaking changes to interact with other instances where those breaking changes alter or remove the Strategic or Tactical Intent functionality listed above.

Tactical Intent 6: Work Discovery, Negotiating, Contracting and Ownership within the System

In order for the System to be useful beyond the automated processes, it's necessary to allow Users of the System to discover problems that need to be solved, offer solutions to those problems, enter into Contracts (mutual agreements) that lock these two and which can be enforced within the System, and be confident that if the work is carried out, the Contract will be honoured.

This also implies some method of proof of ownership for each Contribution, including the problem and solution, the contract and the outputs from the project. That proof of ownership should act as an asset itself, be tradeable, have rights (such as beneficial financial rights) attached to it, and allow for fractional ownership.

To do that, we believe the following properties are required:

Must

1. Provide a System of trust, backed up in a common agreement or agreements, that allow two Users to interact with confidence that the other party will act in good faith in accordance with that agreement. This includes the indelible publishing of the agreements by which a party is willing to be engaged, and a record of their past adherence to those agreements.
2. Provide a method for submitting problems and solutions with an indelible payload, timestamp and which provides proof of ownership.
3. Allow for two parties to negotiate around this problem/solution fit, reach agreement in a Contract and alter the ownership, rights or beneficial ownership of a Contribution either ahead of it being committed or after the fact, with that Contract being backed by automation which triggers on acceptance that the Contract has been fulfilled.
4. Provide an escrow service for rights, ownership or payment that is beyond the reach of Contracting parties to alter, including through the alteration of any higher level Contracts they have agreed to be held by (e.g. regardless of Governance, Contracts are executed.)

Should

1. Provide an Arbitration service for the inevitable edge cases, where it's unclear if the automated function of Escrow should be executed.
2. Provide a method for publicising problems that need to be solved, and allow others to propose solutions to those problems.
3. Provide a method for also publicising solutions in search of a problem.
4. Provide a method for searching the published problems and solutions (ie discovery.)
5. Provide a method for publicising problems that need to be solved, and allow others to propose solutions to those problems.
6. Provide a method of publicising solutions unilaterally, ie without an explicit link to answering a problem. This could be solutions that are yet to be built, or solutions that are already built but have certain functions and characteristics that can be potentially used to solve a problem.

Could

1. Provide the legal documentation that Users may opt to sign, and thereby be held to traditional law if the internal services do not satify complaints.
2. For the proof of ownership, allow for fractional ownership of if more than one user was involved in it's creation
3. For the proof of ownership, and allow for the trading of those ownership rights.

Must not

1. Imply that the services provided in the System override any real-world obligations or laws.
2. Allow any Contracts or User generated algorithms to override the Core Functionality in the Strategic and Tactical Intent that others assume is in place and rely on.
3. Fall foul of Securities Laws in terms of the after-market trading of the proofs of ownership.