What is Dcourt?Dcourt is a universal arbitration layer on top of Ethereum smart contracts. It is a proposed new solution to assure fairness between users while cutting down the extra fees that many middlemen apply. It adds a new layer on top of Ethereum smart contracts where off-chain transactions and interactions, whether electronic or physical, are interactively verifiable.
How Dcourt worksA permissionless network of jurors competes in an economic game to resolve cases delegated by client smart contracts. The accuser and the defendant of each case are each given an opportunity to present evidence in front of the jury within a trial window. The jury's verdict is then based on the previously agreed upon contract signed by the disputing parties and the present evidence. Dcourt sends the final verdict back to the client smart contract. Ultimately, Dcourt gives the client smart contracts the freedom in deciding the consequences of the verdict made by the jury. Dcourt, by itself, has no power or say in the consequences of the verdict, this entirely relies within the authority of the smart contract. This should not be an issue since client smart contracts are trustless themselves and their behavior is always predictable. In some cases, client smart contracts might even ignore the jury's verdict. For example, if the accuser and defendant already reached a settlement.
Proof-of-JusticeTo guarantee the jury's fairness and competence, we employ a system similar to Bitcoin's computationally expensive proof-of-work. Our system, called proof-of-justice, is rather intellectually expensive and relies on an economic game that provides jurors with the appropriate incentives and penalties to do their job as well as possible and refrain from misbehaving.
The Dcourt EcosystemThe Dcourt ecosystem will consist of five main components:
- Arbitration Smart Contract: The Solidity smart contract will be the core of the Dcourt ecosystem and functions as the decentralized backend for the entire ecosystem. Client smart contracts will communicate with the Dcourt smart contract in order to delegate disputes started by their users.
- Jury Interface: Jurors will interact with Dcourt through one dedicated interface as a one stop shop. The decentralized interface will communicate with the Dcourt smart contract on behalf of a juror either through Metamask or the user’s local node. The jury interface will allow jurors to quickly browse cases submitted by all third party smart contracts, review them during the trial period, vote on them, and claim their rewards.
- Developer SDK: A command-line tool will be provided to third party developers who seek to build their decentralized applications on top of Dcourt.
- Browser Extension: The Dcourt browser extension will be designed to ensure the user’s safety in cases where the client smart contract’s web interface cannot be trusted.
- Universal Case Explorer: Each user who has participated in a Dcourt case whether as an accuser or a defendant will have a public track record attached to their identity that will remain on the blockchain forever. This allows for a decentralized universal reputation system that includes all decentralized applications connected to Dcourt.
Potential use cases- Complex DAOs: Consider a DAO under a majority attack that aims to defeat the original purpose of the DAO when it was first founded. A constitution in plain English, would be written and sent to Dcourt at the creation of the DAO, which would specify rules that should be enforced even in spite of a future opposing majority. In our example, say a certain government bought 50%+1 of a human rights DAO for the purpose of ceasing all of its funds or blocking all of its future resolutions. The minority being harmed by this malicious attack, could file a case at Dcourt and block the resolutions set in motion by the opposing government or in some cases, freeze its assets and voting power. Using Dcourt to secure a DAO will always guarantee the accomplishment of its initial mission regardless of the bias or affiliations of each shareholder.
- Decentralized Escrow Token Exchange: Dcourt can help you create a decentralized Ethereum currency exchange service. A token escrow client smart contract could use Dcourt to secure transactions involving fiat currency or any other physical assets. Dcourt would function as a dispute arbitrator between users without the need for an intermediary.
- Decentralized Encyclopedia: The downside of most popular online encyclopedias is that they are easily edited, and hence not 100% trustworthy. A decentralized encyclopedia secured by Dcourt could be the perfect solution to this problem. Using Dcourt, one can create autonomous terms of service, incentivizing all users to look for violations of such terms made by any content contributor and file a case against them which will result in penalizing them if found guilty. In which case, some or all of his assets would be transferred to the accuser as a reward, and his modification to the content would be reversed.
- Rights Management: Using Dcourt, you can create a content sharing service where a content owner can create a license, that could be coupled with, in this case a video, a web template or other types of media. In the case of a copyright infringement, the legitimate copyright owner can file a case against an uploader. In which case, the accuser would refer to the legitimate owner and provide evidence of ownership asking the court to transfer digital ownership rights of the content to them, take down the content, cut off revenue from content going to the illegitimate uploader or any other penalty that you can design in your decentralized application.
- Sharing Economies: Using Dcourt it would be easier to implement decentralized Uber or AirBNB-like applications without central middlemen or service fees. A client smart contract would handle payments and matchmaking over the blockchain while it delegates dispute arbitration to Dcourt when users are in conflict.
Smart Contract Relayed TransactionsSince Dcourt relies on Solidity smart contracts as its platform, it must implement the ERC20 standard for its token. But ERC20-compliant tokens come with a big disadvantage against native coins: They require every user to possess a small amount of Ether in order to cover the smart contract gas fees. This seriously hurts the user experience of decentralized applications including Dcourt. In order to solve this problem, we propose a complementary standard to the ERC20 standard. Read about it on our
blog post.
Bounty CampaignWe will be announcing our bounty campaign before the end of the month. Follow this thread for updates.
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