I got an idea of an altcoin. I think it is important. Since I don't have any background in programming, I can not develop it.
So, I just want to share. Maybe it can be a hint to someone.
My English is far from perfect. I proofread it many times, but there will be mistakes.
Problems that blockchain can solve vary. If you read whitepapers from many ICOs, they think they can apply blockchain anywhere. But in reality, we are only in an experimental stage of using blockchain as a medium of exchange. One of the reasons is that there is a weak connection between the real world and crypto world. Currently, only products or services that can be delivered by wire are exchanged. Sending coins via internet means sending value, but what do users get in return? Mainly other coins, computational power, written work(such as Steemit), electricity, storage, doctors consultation but NOT a tablet PC or banana.
All human interaction in the real world starts from collecting basic information such as names, telephone numbers, their accents, even the brand of shoes he wears. This information acts as a basis of trust before any kind of transaction. Sometimes someone you trust introduces another person to you and this procedure could increase the trust dramatically.
In E-referral platform, users exchange documents and these are cross-verified with each other to make a system of assessing trust.
First of all, If you make an account in E-referral platform, you will get a public key and private key as usual. You should also verify your e-mail address. I will call them fundamental information.
In E-referral platform, you can perform several actions.
Action 1. You can
generate a document and possess it.
ex1) ‘My name is John.’
ex2) ‘I like pizza.’
Action 2. You can
send documents either you or other user possess. Documents can be sent in a .txt file. This allows the documents to be sent via any medium. Documents sent also contain a link to the blockchain to make sure of their existence on the blockchain. Also an ‘assessment’ on the documents will be added. Assessments will be explained in the following section. Documents can be sent with rewards(coins) for assessment. Some documents could be auto-’sent’ for convenience just as Facebook feed friends.
Action 3.
Assessment. When you receive documents you can assess the reliability of the documents. You can choose to Accept/Disagree/Verify/Ignore. After your assessment has been made, it will be added to the blockchain linked to both your account and the documents.
‘Accept’ simply means that you believe the contents of the document to be true. You are not giving any credibility to the document other than a potential of authenticity. After the action, the user will get minor reward.
‘Disagree’ is also simple. This action is used when you think the document is not true, but you are not willing to take on any additional responsibility. After the action you will get minor reward.
‘Verify’ is serious. You can verify the document to be true or false. There will be an another action-‘View’ which will show your account and what you’ve verified. To make sure that you are serious, you need to pay certain amount of coins to both ‘Miner’ and ‘The community’ as a fee. Statistics on verification are also shown. (Amounts of coins used to verify that it is true/false, who made those decision, etc.)
‘Ignore’ It means you did nothing for the document, same as unassessed.
These actions are added to the blockchain. Let’s say a document, ‘My name is John.’, has been sent to 100 users. 84 of them accepted, 1 of them disagree, 3 of them verified it to be true and 12 of them ignored. When this document is sent to another user, it will consist of all the data above. The user can also ‘View’ the accounts which made those actions. If a document is accepted and verified to be true by many users, but verified not to be true by a user with high credibility, such as a government entity, credibility of the document is also put into question. This also represents the fact that ‘nothing is 100% true in reality’.
Action 4.
Hide/open access to documents. Documents possessed by a user can be hidden or open to other users. Like sharing documents in Google Drive, or giving permission to view on Facebook, there could be options for the methods and scope of this feature.
Action 5.
View. By e-mail address or public key. Users can see documents they have permissions for. It would look like the following examples.
ex 1)
Public key: 0zagjeiglalkjes398las
E-mail Address :
000290890@gmail.comCurrent reputation state: stable
Documents available.
‘My name is John.’ (Accepted 84, Disagreed 1, Verified to be true 3-coin used : 690, avg 230 ≒ $ 3.41, Ignored 12)
‘Handsome’.(Accepted 10, Disagreed 24, Verified 0, Ignored 68)
‘Graduated Seoul High School’ (Accepted 3, Disagreed 0 , verified to be true 2-coin used : 1000, avg 500 ≒ $ 6.9 , Ignored 77)
ex 2)
Public key : 0zdkjgq39u06jkadklsjg
E-mail address :
Samsungjjang@samsung.com Current reputation state : superb
Documents available
‘Official Certification Center of Samsung’ (Accepted 3492809, Disagreed 2909, Verified to be true-29 coin used: 8798700 avg : 303403≒ $ 196785 , Ignored 38901)
‘Preparing ICO in JUN 2019’.(Accepted 123415, Disagreed 4125, Verified to be true- 3 coin used : 215500 avg : 71833….)
etc
etc
예 3)
Public key : 0zdjklgj29glakjkj3
Private key :
KoreaGov@go.kr Current reputation state : ________(you can imagine)
Documents available
‘Government of South Korea(대한민국 정부입니다.)’(Accepted 341,2898, Disagreed 1982,7958, Verified to be true 2- coin used 158410, avg : 79205 ≒ $ 1174, Ignored 139088)
Each document has a counting of each assessment, and users check which accounts did the assessment by clicking ‘Accept, Disagree, Verified, Ignore’. This information could be used to examine suspicious documents.
There could be a ‘Verified not to be true’ action. This action is also very important but excluded from this paper for convenience.
Action 6.
Generate a meta-document. By compiling multiple documents, a user can make a meta-document. It has a class of document and works similar with normal documents. The counting of each document’s assessment can be called ‘Referral data’. For convenience I will use ‘(referral data)’ in the following example instead of making imaginary data up.
ex 1)
Name : John(referral data)
Id number : 989898-8897875(referral data)
Address : 13 Molayo Street, Kwan-ak, Seoul, South Korea(referral data)
Phone number : 010-0000-0001(referral data)
Graduated Seoul Elementary School in 2000(referral data)
Graduated Suwon Middle School in 2003(referral data)
Graduated Seoul High School in 2006(referral data)
Graduated South Seoul College in 2012(referral data)
Internship in Hyundai 2013.4 ~ 2014. 2(referral data)
Developed skjenkd in Samsung gjke Department(referral data)
Action 7. Request documents. A user can request to issue documents. Some entities can provide services such as issuing a Birth Certificate or Passport. With relevant proof and a fee, an entity can generate and verify itself and deliver the document to the user. After delivery, the document belongs to the user not the entity.
Those 7 actions are
basic actions. There are some additional features to be included.
Some documents can have a predetermined class - Name, Telephone number, Address, etc. Such basic information can be used in particular cases (such as a smart contract which allows accounts which have filled and verified Name and Address to participate). Very importantly, these documents can be sent with original data hidden, while the referral data is shown.
This would look like:
Name : ***********(Accepted 7800, Disagreed 230,7958, Verified to be true 4- coin used 8850, avg : 2212 ≒ $ 274, Ignored 29088)
This feature is important. I will cover it later in ‘use cases’.
When sending a document, a sender can attach a fee within a smart contract. For the verification, the user who received the document can use the attached fee to pay for the verification and keep the change. This works as an incentive for the verification. There could be entities which perform verification for profit.
Generating and possessing of a document can be shared by multiple users.
Examples of usage 1) use it as a business cardInstead of using business cards, Mike has decided to use a meta-document in E-referral. Unlike printed business card with no referral, information on E-referral is backed by other users. Since data on blockchain are time-stamped, users can easily understand how long this data has been relevant. Mike doesn’t have to use the expression ‘more than 10 years’ experience in teaching.’ anymore. Instead he generates ‘I am a teacher’ within the document and keep it accepted for 10 years.
2) use it in a dateSarah met an attractive guy at a club. She kinda likes him, but she wants to be extra cautious. So, she asks him for some information about himself. In return, he gives her an immutable meta-document with his name hidden, but referral data shown and a police clearance issued by government to his ‘Public address’. Maybe he wants some privacy too. While she doesn’t have access to all of his personal information, at least she knows he is not a criminal and it seemed that he has many reliable friends.
3) use it as a certificationIan is a dentist. For his holiday, he made a special plan. He will visit Ethiopia to help people for two weeks. The Ethiopian government asks him to submit relevant documents proving him as a properly registered dentist. He generates the needed documents and has them verified by his own government. Since government’s account verified those documents, and has a super high reputation, those documents are more reliable than forgeable paper documents.
4) use it as a CVJane wants to find another job. Rather than writing a traditional CV, she just creates a meta-document of what she has done. Some documents are backed by her colleagues; others are backed by her previous company. And for the recruitment team, it is a blessing. They don’t have to struggle to find which part of CV is exaggerated or counterfeited. Every line has its own references.
5) use it as a contractLaura want to sell her house to Sam. They make a contract using E-referral platform. Laura writes a draft and Sam modifies it. When every detail of the contract is finalized, they both verify the document and share it.
6) use it as an uber-like serviceSofia wants to find a taxi from a decentralized platform. A driver sends her his profile. His name, address and e-mail are hidden, but the referral data is sound. Sofia also receives his public key and police clearance issued to his public address. For maximum security, every taxi driver is required to send a police clearance and basic information to a customer. Also, the taxi driver receives similar information from the customer. Each of them knows the other’s identity information is sound, but does not know what exactly it is. This data is made available by an additional request with a fee for some occasions such as a lost cell phone in the taxi. When there is a criminal activity, police would know where to start, contact details or address. And of this data is probably backed by his/her friends.
In this case, both Sofia and the taxi driver sacrificed their privacy to some point. But also they all know that their personal information will be hidden until the counterparty pays for unveiling it. That wouldn’t happen if everything went smoothly. And still, privacy is kept better than the current system. Without E-referral ,referral, we will never know who we are dealing with in blockchiain. All we have public keys or contract addresses which are very inhuman and unreliable.
7) use it in e-commerceGavin sells a banana through a decentralized e-commerce platform. He made a smart contract to sell the banana. He also includes a delivery company in the contract. Instead of opening his personal data to the public, he gives permission to access the data restricted to the company. Alice ‘The Famous’ wants to buy the banana. Alice’s personal data is not open to Gavin either. If Alice initiates the smart contract, Gavin will give the banana to the delivery company which delivers it to Alice. Alice’s address and contact details are open to the company, but not Gavin.
Yes. We are using a middle-man. But this middle-man just delivers. This middle-man’s role is limited compared to current centralized system and they are replaceable. This system has following advantages.
Gavin pays less compared to a centralized system.
If Alice receives a rotten banana, she can take a photo at the time of delivery and make a claim.
Products do not have to be delivered via wire.Selling illegal products become very difficult as their goods are sold, they leave an immutable trail on the blockchain making this system censorship friendly.
Either the buyer or seller can set certain qualifications to join a smart contract.
RoadmapUnlike other roadmaps focused on a technological point of view, this is more about user-adoption.
Business Card : When people start to exchange personal data through this platform.
CV : When this platform is consider to be reliable source of data.
Contract : When contracts from E-referral are more accepted than conventional contracts.
Integrated Self : When people conceive public address as an alternative self in blockchain.
Difference with Civic Civic is more about the authentication of documents. It is meaningful, but hard to achieve. For successful adoption, cooperation from government is essential. It’s more a ‘top-down approach’. People will start using it only after governments and other organizations are ready for them. However, many governments are still ignorant or sometimes hostile to the cryptocommunity.
The E-referral platform starts from the bottom. Geeks who are willing to read this paper would start using it first. Normal people will follow. Governments can join later.
Imagine if Vitalik Buterin, Charlie Lee and Roger Ver cross-accept/verify each others’ profile, then Vitalik’s name wouldn’t be used by scammers anymore. He can simply generate documents-‘I am a advisor of Kyber Network’ and ‘This is me socially precommitting that I will not be an advisor for future ICO projects’, then developers of Kyber Network would be more than happy to verify them. Those people would be starting nodes of trust.
Problems to be solved (these are memos for the future)
reputation system, consensus and mining system, including telephone or sns company. Multiple Coins
Data on blockchain is immutable and smart contracts ensure execution. But the real world is mutable and no contract can be executed for sure. Sometimes basic information such as name or telephone number is not true. In these unreliable circumstances, humans have made transactions. This is possible because we have certain ways of referral on each other. For more important contracts, we review the source of the information more carefully and we know what to do when it goes wrong.
Smart contracts are perfect in execution.
So imperfectly executed contracts (in the real world) cannot be covered by smart contracts. In reality, no contracts are executed for sure. Sometimes we need the help of a physical intervention. With smart contracts only, tradeable objects are limited by wire transfer.
If the we really wants to replace Amazon or Uber, we need connections. A connection which will lead us to the blockchain. E-referral will start this procedure from saying ‘Hi’ and introducing ourselves to each other through the blockchain. I admit that in the E-referral system, we relinquish some of the well-known crypto virtue-anonymity and censorship resistance. But still users still hold control of their data.
The censorship has its own role in our society. In a perfectly anonymous and decentralized system, no one can stop someone from streaming child pornography or supporting terrorism. If I had to choose one of them, I would keep the decentralized system intact by relinquishing some anonymity. Eventually, the E-referral platform will be a system of how we manage our credibility and credit.
The potential of blockchain with smart contracts is huge. But, ironically, smart contracts are too perfect for this mutable world we live in. I dare to believe that the simple act of ‘exchanging business cards’ is the killer app for mass adoption of transactions based on smart contracts.
End of the document.
Sending this 'message in a bottle' with a hope.
