Mechanical turk oracle

[drazvan]

Hello everyone,

I'm not sure if anyone has implemented something like this (coinworker.com doesn't seem to do what I want), so here goes: is there a service that allows me to post small tasks that validate transactions (for instance, "check that tracking number XXXXXX on USPS has been delivered and signed for by FIRSTNAME LASTNAME") and return a signed response that can be verified automatically?

This could be put together with Amazon's Mechanical Turk and a frontend interface that takes the answers, determines if a consensus (or majority) has been reached (workers generally agree that the conditions have been met) and then sign the response to indicate this (or sign the given Bitcoin transaction in a multisig situation).

The conditions would have to be described in a human-readable format (sort of like a short "terms and conditions" document) that can be posted to workers to get their confirmation.

In off-chain payment systems (such as my OtherCoin project - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321085.0 ), the funds could be transferred back to the payer if the workers agree that the service has not been provided / goods have not been delivered.

The payer must also have an option to not submit the transaction at all to the oracle (if there is no disagreement with the payee - services _have_ been provided / goods _have_ arrived, etc). If there is a disagreement, the payee/merchant asks the oracle to arbitrate - in turn, the oracle asks a number of (paid) workers to run the instructions given and answer yes/no. The answer is then returned in a signed format to the requester (usually the seller) - in the case of OtherCoin, that results in the private key being unblocked. In the case of direct Bitcoin transactions, the oracle applies its signature to a transaction.

Does something like this exist already? If it does, I would pay to use it / integrate it into our OtherCoin project.

[1715689361]

1715689361

[no141]

If it's something that can be verified by automated means of checking a website in your example, why would you need to pay people to make the decisions?

I automate things all the time to get data, or to do what I want. Amazon mturk is used to help with the things automation is not good at usually. Maybe you just gave a bad example, but really since everything done with coins is public, automation can do it. And if it's really important there's no downtime on a site format change, then fall back to people while the updates to the code are made.

[edmundedgar]

I'm working on a system that will provide Bitcoin-network-readable validation of data from certain specified APIs in a form that can be used to unlock multi-sig transactions. I then provide a human fallback, that can be triggered by paying a fee, if something goes wrong with the API and somebody is confident enough that a human check will return a different result that they're prepared to pay for it.

In principle I can point this at any public API with sufficiently friendly Terms of Service, which I suppose might include postal systems with tracking numbers. Would that solve your problem? Like no141 I'm not really clear what work Mechanical Turk is doing in your example, although I can think of examples where you might want to pay a bunch of independent witnesses to an event that can't be solved unambiguously thorough any known public API.

[drazvan]

Yes, maybe my example wasn't the best choice. What I'm trying to achieve is a way for parties to include arbitrary contracts (or terms and conditions) with their transactions (not just parcel tracking) - some of the checks could be done automatically, but since the oracle is only contacted in the case of a dispute, parties agree to pay for the arbitration services. More like a "jury of your peers" - humans that look at the terms of the contract that parties agreed to and decide if it has been followed.

In my OtherCoin project (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321085.0) I plan to add this as a way for users to earn a few satoshis by acting as mediators / judges in disputes between other users and merchants.