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Applications on SEEEDS: A superior financial system for apps (6)
For decentralized platforms to replace the incumbent centralized models, they'll need to be better in every possible way.
SEEDS is designed to support a wide variety of applications. To understand this, if SEEDS were the 'Internet' then applications would be 'websites'.
Websites (and Apps/DApps) can be run by individuals or organizations for a myriad of purposes. All applications on SEEDS pull various information from the same blockchain. These applications will store the most vital information on the blockchain, while storing other information 'off chain'.
SEEDS to existing on-line platforms, is like the internet to brick and mortar companies. SEEDS supplements, supports and improves the primary business models of many organizations.
- reverses payment processing fees (rewarding opposed to charging);
- provides immutable, built-in accounting;
- removes review-fraud and manipulation;
- combines the efforts of other organizations in advertising and opening new markets;
- rewards you for the value your applications bring to the whole economy;
- provides you access to SEEDS decentralized benefits which reduce overhead costs (arbitration, ecosystem-customer support, etc);
- creates the economic incentive for other SEEDS developers to collaborate on the development and improvement of your application;
- lets you offer your customers access to crypto-payments with an easily-convertible, less-volatile, border-less, instant transaction-currency.
These benefits, along with the other benefits mentioned in previous pages and below are available to applications who choose to use SEEDS.
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Our First Attempts at the Sharing Economy and Online Marketplaces
Airbnb, Uber, Wework, Fiver, Amazon, Craigslist, Ebay, the sharing economies and the online marketplaces. These applications have dramatically changed the world in which we engage. The list of industries they've disrupted is long, the cost to the incumbents is monumental. They were the first step in our evolution towards a true sharing economy, paving the way to the next evolution.
Decentralized applications operating on Light, are in a prime position to replace these centralized applications and organizations.
The glaring issues with these centralized applications are:
- their fee structure;
- the misalignment of interests between users, investors and management;
- can be easily shutdown through server failure or intervention;
- can be sold to various competitors;
- central owners are tracking and selling users data;
- the lack of information sharing between various applications;
- no direct information flow between the people who use the platforms, those who maintain them and those who make the decisions;
- prone to censorship and abuse.
The decentralized applications on Light are immune to these vulnerabilities.
"Nearly 1 in 4 Americans now earns money from digital platforms".
An increasing number of people are relying on digital platforms for their economic livelihoods. Light ensures its Partners the greatest protections from failures, and disruption in their economic means. While also providing superior economic incentives.
The businesses extracts resources from the earth and people; the investors extract profit; the users extract products or service;, employees extract wages and management is stuck in the middle attempting to balance these competing interests and evolve the organization.
There is no common ground for incentives and alignments between these parties.
Such extractive models incentivize users to avoid paying fees and don't reward users who contribute to the whole, anymore than those who don't.
A seller on Amazon who does exceptionally well and brings in many new users, gets no more benefit than a seller who does not. In fact, the more active seller would just pay more fees. The only party who benefits is Amazons shareholders (which is monumentally centralized).
These first attempts at the 'sharing economy' have not equitably distributed the rewards of the successes of these platforms, to the people who truly bring them value.
Amazon charges monthly subscriptions, per-item fees and percentage fees (upwards of 20%) to merchants who sell on Amazon.
Uber Eats charges upwards of 35% to restaurants for using their platform.
Our first attempts at "sharing economies" and on-line marketplaces have charged users hefty fees to participate in their ecosystems and centralized the rewards to founders and investors.
Light provides an ecosystem where applications don't need to charge their users fees. Further, all Partners of Light gain rewards for participation in the platform, reversing the paradigm.
Imagine if Amazon would only accept 'Amazon tokens' for transacting on Amazons marketplace. There would be incredible demand for these tokens, as people value the utility that Amazon's marketplace brings. This is what applications bring to the SEEDS Economy, by requiring users to transact in Seeds they create the demand and utility for Seeds.
The SEEDS Economy is optimized for marketplace applications. For this reason, some of the first applications on SEEDS will be decentralized marketplaces; where Partners and Guests utilize Seeds to transact.
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SEEDS, A Mandatory Economic Structure For the Future of Peer-to-Peer
When platforms require users to pay them for their peer-to-peer services, what's to stop these users from circumnavigating the application and dealing direct?
The most successful P2P platforms are for non-routine interactions. Thus it is less likely that people will build relationships, deal direct, and cut out the middleman (the platform).
SEEDS applications aim to create routine P2P interactions.
There are a myriad of ways platforms are attempting to combat this issue. Many P2P platforms have failed, as they were unable to create the proper economics as fees also provide friction- slowing growth.
However, at SEEDS we completely remove the problem. We don't charge our Partners to interact, we encourage and reward them for doing so.
It is likely that Partners would prefer SEEDS economy over the alternatives.
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Facilitating Trust in a Decentralized Free-Market Ecosystem
The blockchain creates a trust-free/trust-less environment for ledger balances, transfers and all Seed economics. This is because there is no need for 'trust' when users of these systems can 'know' and see.
However, this trust-free environment can pose problems when the platform is designed as a marketplace. Reviews, ratings and reputation together facilitate an environment where trust can be built between partners and encourage high-quality interactions in a decentralized market.
These elements all determine the validity and trust of an account. Whether it's delivering food, growing produce, making meals or renting land on Light Food, etc. All aspects of SEEDS can be rated and reviewed adding to one's account reputation.
Leaving reviews builds the reputation of an account and encourages Partners and users to provide this feedback.
Reviews are comments on people's accounts and particular services or products offered by an account. Accounts will only be able to review each others verified interactions. These reviews carry with it an availability to provide a rating metric for each verified transaction. Since reviews are only accepted from accounts with verified transactions, fraudulent and false reviews are highly unlikely. Further, since reviews are stored on the blockchain, they can never be removed. However, they can be updated by the reviewer with a stored record of any alterations.
Ratings are given with a sliding bar from -100 (strongly distrust) to +100 (strongly trust). Ratings are able to be given to any account- for any reason. An account can only provide a single rating for another account. Accounts can alter the ratings they gave at any time.
Reputation is a third metric for partners to determine high-quality accounts and consists of the reviews and ratings given to a particular account along with all the various activity that account has done. *See reputation in accounts.
All transactions, account balances, reviews and ratings are available for any one to see of any account. This radically transparent environment, discourages unethical behavior as it is likely that the account will be exposed and brought to arbitration.
SEEDS is not centralized. Therefore there is no central authority that can be coerced, conned, bribed or capable of removing or censoring content. The only ability to do so is through a decentralized arbitration protocol that lets the community decide.
Accounts are responsible to abide by the constitution, so illegal and fraudulent activity will likely be removed with the arbitration process. This constitution is a reference for any accounts engaged in the arbitration process. The constitution can be amended and updated by the community as necessary.
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SEEDS Self-Policing Marketplaces
SEEDS can maintain a legal, safe, and ethical marketplace without using centralized methods of censorship or policing to achieve this.
Some Partners on SEEDS may choose to enforce the ethics, terms, conditions and SEEDS Constitution. These documents will explicitly state what activities are not allowed on SEEDS . If a user finds an account that violates these terms, they can request that account be closed and stake Seeds behind this claim.
This challenge would initiate the SEEDS Facilitated Arbitration Protocol. Partners who successfully find and report these accounts receive the closed accounts required Seed stake for the accounts transaction volume. This reward is compensation for the work associated with finding and reporting these accounts. However, if the account was deemed by the arbiters to be within the SEEDS Constitution, terms and conditions then the challenging account will forfeit their staked Seeds. This stake is equal to the account in question's minimum required balance as compensation if the account was placed on hold, or the Seeds will be burned if the challenged account was not affected.
Accounts will be immediately frozen if a partner challenges an account with claims of stolen or fraudulently received Seeds; this hold will last during the arbitration process.
Accounts that are challenged for other reasons, such as conducting proxy transactions, will not be put on hold during the arbitration period.
Pending the outcome of arbitration the user of the account can delegate a secondary account to receive any Seeds that haven’t been planted. Planted seeds above the minimum will be released to the delegated account through the un-planting protocol. The user can request an appeal to the SEEDS community through the proposal process; and will have the account reinstated and Seeds returned if successful.
An account with a high transaction volume will require a higher minimum planted Seeds to maintain this account. This means that in order to challenge a higher transactional account, a challenger needs to stake a higher number of Seeds on this claim. This also means that higher transaction accounts have more to lose for misconduct. This is a method for pairing fines equal to the potential damage an account may have had to the SEEDS ecosystem and requiring more commitment to challenge a higher quality account.
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Built in Collateral For Peace-of-Mind
If a transaction fails to live up to either parties expectations, either party can request arbitration.
Each account has collateral (in the form of planted Seeds & future harvests) that can be used as compensation for failed interactions if accounts don't voluntarily pay the compensation determined by the arbitrators.
Collateral held in smart-contract escrow is an optional requirement that any seller can implement. This may be a common practice for high-value interactions.
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Centralized Censorship Resistant
There is no central authority that can remove or censor Partners of SEEDS. There is only the arbitration process for self-policing Partners for breaking the constitution. This process employs randomized Partners and won't represent the desires of a central authority.
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A User Friendly Blockchain For Apps
At present, the majority of blockchains offer no recourse when currency is hacked, stolen or lost. With SEEDS, Seeds cannot be lost as they are always associated with an account and users have multiple channels to recover an account if need be.
If funds were sent inaccurately, stolen or if problems of any kind occur; an account can request arbitration to the community to rectify the problem.
If we are to create an ecosystem of widespread adoption and use, it would be mandatory that recourse for human error or fraud is built into the system.
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Solving Review-Fraud and Manipulation
Buying reviews, paying to modify reviews and fake reviews are common problems in many on-line review systems and will remain as such as long as control of the review system is centralized. On SEEDS, reviews can only be made when there is a verified transaction and for that transaction.
The only agent capable of modifying a review is the account who created it.
With SEEDS, Partners can trust that reviews are authentic.
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One Account | Unlimited Apps
A new participant on the network would be able to access (and create accounts on) SEEDS through a variety of applications.
These accounts will enable the user to access all the various applications on SEEDS .
From a user experience it is similar to how Facebook can be used as a login to various websites and applications. The difference being that on SEEDS, your entire account data would be able to integrate with all other sites and applications. Meaning you would have a single address, wallet, reputation, review system, use metrics shared between all your applications.
This allows a user to build a single account value for activity on any application on SEEDS (and thus not only gain value from food related activities, but any activities that might be hosted on the wider and future SEEDS Ecosystem). So, a user can build reputation and gain monetary rewards (harvests) for their actions and contributions (from transacting, rating, leaving reviews, etc) anywhere across the SEEDS network.
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Better-Than-Free Apps
'Instead of charging you to use the platform, SEEDS rewards you the more you participate!'
SEEDS economy allows app developers to be economically rewarded without needing to charge you fees or subscriptions. In fact, as a Partners of SEEDS you are actually rewarded for using and benefiting from the services provided by these applications.