— v1.2 draft [[proof-of-work]] [[value]] [[future]] [[big-problems]] [[grants]]
2021 saw the legendary $ENS airdrop. It was worth $12000 when I tried to claim mine. Then we saw OpenDAO airdrop $SOS token. Then $YEAR and now Anish Agnihotri has just given out the tools to do this without much effort.
This was common in the previous bull run too. I saw some random tokens airdropped to my Binance account.
My way of evaluating these projects is to see the amount of effort they put in.
The ENS team has been buidling for a long time. They drove adoption based on solving a problem for users, not by “incentivizing” using their token.
When we say proof-of-work, people usually see it as Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism. Proof-of-work is actually any reliable proof that someone has put in the effort.
Imagine if we measure the cumulative attention (or even time) spent by everyone working on ENS and compare it to the cumulative attention by $SOS team and publish it trustlessly.
I’m sure the gap is wide.
Real Proof-of-work
Satoshi took electricity as a unit of work. But in our world, the only real units of work are:
- Attention (!= Time)
- Reputation: Cumulative quality of their past work, as assessed by their peers/society
Attention x reputation is the real proof-of-work.
When we will be able to measure those trustlessly, we should be able to determine job pays / salaries more reliably.
Risk
The only thing missing here is the variable of risk.
Some people are taking more risks than others and should be compensated accordingly.
Truly speaking everyone’s value in this world’s large ledger should be:
Attention x reputation x risk.
The world owes a lot to someone like Nikola Tesla but we weren’t equipped to measure these things before.
This may be one of the most important problems of our times.
To align:
The value created by an individual for society = the value that society gives them back (another gamut to be figured out. Maybe includes status, perks, wealth, who knows!)
Friction between these two currently includes a ton of people and the opacity of markets. Performance reviews are yuck. Employee time cards != attention. Degrees != reputation (too much variability/noise).
We have the technology for solving one side of this equation. Who is buidling this? What do you think is missing here? Please let me know.
Unbaked thought: I think a combination of these three is the triangle of leverage. This is how someone like Hemingway or Nikola Tesla created immense value for society.