Crystal: Universal Crypto-reputation + Decentralized Decision Making

Hey guys,

For a long time we've been watching the Bitcoin/altcoin space, and we noticed two recurring needs:

1. Reputation: In a decentralized and anonymous system, how can you know whom to trust?

2. Decision Making: In a decentralized and anonymous system, how can you make decisions and take actions that are of benefit to the whole community?

We've seen this same recurring needs pop up in a variety of P2P projects, from Bitcoin, to IPFS to Steemit to Golem.

So what we've been working on over the past 9 months is a protocol that can solve both these problems in an elegant way: Allowing individuals to transfer reputation from network to network without losing the meaning of the reputation metrics. We're rapidly approaching our ICO, and would love some feedback on what you guys think of the idea, and any advice you have for the crowdsale: Here's our abstract and summary from the whitepaper:

Abstract
We present a method to crowdsource expertise and technical tasks, leading to better outcomes at a lower cost than traditional contracting. This method naturally leads to credible reputation metrics that measure an individual’s values and skills, and can be further extended to provide decentralized governance structures for organizations - a mechanism we call reputarchy.

Two distinct reputation types are used to rank individuals: values and skills. By using these reputations types in crowdsourced contests, we can optimize results according to an arbitrary utility function and update the individual’s reputation accordingly. This reputation can be transferred between communities without diluting its validity, allowing for the creation of a universal reputation network.

Using cryptocurrencies and programmable blockchain smart contracts, a well-designed competition marketplace can incentivize competition and cooperation. This system, combined with several distinct contest types, can be used to emulate most crowdsourced communities and marketplaces. Such communities are a microcosm of our vision: a global collaborative network, representing every conceivable aspect of human ingenuity and judgement.

SUMMARY

Reputation Measures
Crystal is a platform that aims to connect communities of experts on the internet into a global network with quantifiable reputation scores for both the values they exhibit as well as the skills they possess. Values are ranked through a web-of-trust system, and are assumed to be transitive meaning those whom exhibit values are assumed to be better at judging those same values in others. Skills are ranked by a system of competition where experts who perform well earn reputation from those who perform poorly. In this way skills based-reputation measures the relative skill-set of an expert compared to other experts.

Communities
Both values-based reputation and skills-based reputation exist in the context of a community, which is defined as a group of people who share similar values and objectives. These communities are a form of organization that are self-organized around economic and social incentives.

Checks and balances in the Crystal protocol encourage community collaboration. Community core values are explicitly defined, but norms for what those values mean are flexible and moderated by our value score algorithm. Community members share in rewards and common good to the extent that they are recognized by their peers through reputation and are rewarded percentages of income based on outcomes derived from contests and reputation score.

Crystal is unique in its ability for experts to transfer between communities while maintaining a percentage of reputation in proportion to how similar the two communities are to each other. This ability is what allows Crystal to be a global measure of reputation, instead of a series of one off metrics such as Reddit karma or STEEM power.

Contests
Contests are at the center of the Crystal protocol. In practice, a contest creator (client) is seeking a good (service or product) to be provided at the maximum level of quality and minimum of cost possible in the marketplace. A contest can be seen as a task to be fulfilled or challenge for experts to solve. The client will define contests which describes what type of results the client desires, the type of work involved and the bounty awarded for the winners. The tasks are then offered to a community of experts, who are economically incentivized to work as a team to generate the best submissions. Teams utilize experts to analyze, inform, or rate creative output of value to the client.

While this crowdsourced work can be traditional knowledge work such as creating a website design, contests can also be for things not traditionally considered crowdsourcing. Examples include incentivizing writing social media posts that get upvoted or comments that are considered insightful.
At the end of the decision making process, the contest reward is split between all experts who helped complete the requirements of the contest, with more value going to those experts who performed better.

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Anyways, we're rapidly approaching the point in which we release our whitepaper and proof-of-concept to the world, and begin our ICO. Would love thoughts as to what ya'll think of the idea, and what our next steps should be to have a smooth, fair, and successful ICO.