FOAM Map: Overview of the TCR Design and Incentives
The FOAM token is a utility and work token used to verify Proof of Location. There are two kinds of Proof of Location, static and dynamic- the former has recently and successfully been deployed to the mainnet of Ethereum. Static Proof of Location is centered around building a consensus driven map of the world by enlisting the work of Cartographers and curators in a Token Curated Registry to build a valuable Point of Interest dataset. In this system, value in the form of protocol tokens are staked to back the veracity of information and attest to the accuracy of the map. This post will serve as a deep dive into the motivations, needs and incentive model of Static Proof of Location.
Introduction
Prior to the introduction of blockchain technology and open financial incentives for network growth it had been difficult to incentive to creation of new open source protocols:
A protocol is a fancy technical term that means: a standard language that lets a bunch of people on the internet work together on a specific problem. Popular internet protocols that have existed for a long time include HTTP (protocol that defines how information is transmitted over the web), SMTP (protocol your email app uses for sending and receiving email), SSL (protocol your browser uses for secure data transfer, the little green key in your browser when you are making a credit card payment). [source]
With the invention of powerful and permissionless blockchain computing technologies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin, new kinds of decentralized economic systems are now possible. These open source systems allowing anyone to own, create or transfer a scarce digital asset on an open financial network without the need of a trusted third party. Blockchains are enabling new protocols to emerge around smart contract token models. These token protocols are interoperable and modular building blocks anyone can hook into. The token serves as the right to participate in the network. The tokenization of protocols allows shared contributions and ownership by all workers and users involved to have a stake in the surplus value being generated by the protocol.
Curation Markets, which in general serve to reduce information asymmetry in the markets with skin-in-the-game indicators generated through the use of tokens. The theory and thinking behind token curated registries is that “if we can correctly align the incentives of token holders, we can produce lists that are as close to the objective truth as possible”. This has massive and unearthed implications for cartography. In the context of points on a map, staked tokens represent “how salient all the bonded information is believed to be (some of it might be underrated or overrated). In other words: many pieces of information will have value staked to them and it creates a global, measurable ranking system of the value of the information.”
The FOAM protocol is intended to serve as an open standard for smart contracts and tokens that are tied to the built environment. The protocol ties together physical coordinates with smart contracts and tokens on the Ethereum blockchain with a consensus mechanism for Proof of Location. This allows users to maintain and share data layers that can then be leveraged for urban analytics and simulation, data visualization, and ultimately sustainable urban development. FOAM allows interested parties, developers, to build geolocation applications hooking into highly-coordinated crowdsourced data signals on the blockchain for the most reliable and accurate geospatial and mapping data.
Curating information about the built environment in the form of a Map can be a powerful force to crowdsource data, demand and preferences for determining the future Spaces that will be constructed. With curation markets on Point of Interest data, public amorphous groups and coalitions can form and coordinate designing, building and facilitating the production of visionary new spaces based in conjunction with new web3financial instruments such as Maker DAO, DHARMA and Set protocol and 0x protocol.
OpenStreetMap Cartography
There exists today a large amount of empirical data to demonstrate that there are non-financial incentives to contribute to Open Source Mapping as a Cartographer. For example OpenStreetMap, the most successful digital open source mapping project, cites over 1 million contributors and 3 million edits a day! The explanation for participation by Cartographers in OSM range from a sense of ownership of curating and contributing to local knowledge to volunteering time to improve maps in areas effected by natural disasters.
However, today there is no motivation or incentive for the verification of open map contributions. In short, this data is prone to accidental errors, incompleteness, outdatedness or vandalism by malicious actors. Currently, companies such as Mapbox serve as a filter to OSM data with in house verification tools that are both automated and checked by employees. Verification of open geospatial data sets are subsidized by centralized entities.
With that, there are still major errors and attacks that make it to the map, in addition to all the inaccuracies that go uncaught. Vandalism to OSM is a common occurrence, so much so their is a wiki page about it. Most recently, Pokemon Go players were editing the base map to cheat the game and by extension bringing havoc to all other users of the map. Another recent example is that New York was renamed by a vandal with anti-Semitic terminology. This OSM attack was not caught by Mapbox and pushed to maps such as Snapchat, Citibike and the FOAM base map. Some long time OSM contributors have gone as far to say that the model and protocol as a whole is in trouble.
The FOAM Map Curation Market
For a Cartographer to add a new Point of Interest to the FOAM Map Token Curated Registry a minimum deposit of tokens must be made with each entry to the list. This deposit is a spam prevention mechanism and a means of introducing skin-in-the-game incentives to the data being proposed. The minimum deposit required by a Cartographer to add a point is not a payment, tokens are owned by the contributor but serve as a testament to the veracity of the point being added and signal that the data is correct, otherwise it could be lost in a challenge, [The ranking function of the TCR by stake will be explored in a future post]. The minimum deposit is a parameter that can be voted to be raised or lowered by token holders over time. This deposit serves as an incentive for curators to verify and check on the accuracy of points over time, as the staked amount to be on the registry can be challenged. The FOAM Map introduces a new incentive for verification and allows for the first time ownership and governance rights in an open source geospatial data set.
The purpose and utility of the FOAM token in Static Proof of Location is to build an open map and social verification system backed by staked value. The token serves as a right to participate in the network and own a piece of the value being created. Work put in by Cartographers contributes directly to the value creation of an accurate and robust Point of Interest dataset through accumulated value that will accrue. The more points that are added to the map contributes to digital scarcity with the increase in staking and a reduced velocity.
Token holders, acting in their own self-interest will produce a valuable list by obtaining and staking a finite supply token. The more listings staked, the scarcer the tokens; the more valuable the list, the more valuable the tokens…
Why not directly reward Cartographers through Inflation?
A common complaint we hear about the FOAM Map and TCR architecture is that in the short term there are no inflationary rewards for contributing points to the protocol. This is a topic we have thought about deeply and worked through many models while designing the system and have concluded that rewarding contributions through inflation runs a high risk of hurting the veracity of the Map.
Ultimately, the work being done in Static Proof of Location on the FOAM Map is done subjectively by humans, even though the goal is to build a data set of objective information; there will still be contested areas of the map and it will be in flux. This human driven work differs from objective computational work done to secure a decentralized network, such as Merkel mining in Livepeer and the work that can be done to mine triangulations in FOAM Dynamic Proof of Location. Because of the ultimate subjective nature of the work done by Cartographers, inflationary rewards open a number of perverse incentives to maximize yield while undermining maintaining an accurate map. These issues include:
- Inflation punishes those Cartographers in these early stages that are taking their time to add quality points as well as physically visit points and document them before adding to the registry, in the case they need to present evidence in public forums as a defense in the case of a challenge. Inflationary rewards could perversely incentive quickly adding low quality points while diluting the shares of those being diligent.
- If the inflationary reward pool for adding verified points is limited it could easily be drained by an attacker adding many low quality points quickly. This also applies if inflation was unlimited and rate limited per point.
- If inflation for rewarding a verified point is time based there is always the n+1 problem of attack or accidental inaccuracies. For example if a point must be verified for 25 days to be eligible for a reward there is always the risk it is only found out to be invalid and challenged after receiving the reward. This also incentivizes hiding low quality points in obscure places.
- If the inflation is too low, there is little added value. For example if for every 1 point added and verified you received 1 token, at the current minimum deposit of 50 tokens, you would be eligible for 1 “free” point for every 50. If the inflation is of any value of substance, it encourages perverse incentives of adding low quality points to chase rewards.
- Most importantly, if the yield of staking on a point is of any significant value it exemplifies thoroughly an attack of a malicious actor accumulating tokens through inflation and defending their low quality points in challenges by voting heavily.
By simply focusing on the token as the right to participate as a cartographer in a consensus driven map, reduce information asymmetry and contribute to an opportunity for enormous value creation while being an owner in the protocol as an incentive, many of the above perverse incentives inflationary rewards for subjective can be avoided all together, while there are multiple known attack potentials as is to be focused on for a registry upgrade. Further, the FOAM token entails governance rights. The minimum deposit is crucial as an anti spam skin in the game mechanism, the token must have value and a market price to back the veracity of the map and network. As value accumulates to the network, the minimum deposit can be voted to be lowered. In this case early Cartographers could then withdraw tokens from their points to either exchange or place into new points.
The point is that it is very difficult from an autonomous protocol level to implement inflationary rewards for human verified work without opening the door to many perverse incentives. That said, there will be centralized early efforts to build out the map through rewards, contests, bounties, leaderboards, reputation and mapathon events.
In Static Proof of Location digital scarcity and value generation drives the creation of an open data set done by human verified work. The goal is to provide a single source of truth about the physical world that any application can build on top of and reference. As smart contract economies mature, the map will become an essential tool to the blockchain ecosystem. The more important the map becomes and the more attention it can capture the higher the stakes that the map is accurate and sufficiently backed by value.
Further, FOAM hopes that the Cartographers and users will contribute the necessary individual work, resources, and effort themselves to contribute to the ongoing community-driven growth and upgrade of this important cartography project. With the addition and use of necessary radio hardware, Proof of Location could be expanded to further prove location status through a time synchronization protocol intended to ensure continuity of a distributed clock. For Dynamic Proof of Location we believe inflationary mechanisms are appropriate to encourage staking and to reward objective computational work: “Stake is required to earn the right to perform work in decentralized PoS-based networks….examples of PoS-based decentralized services include Livepeer for video transcoding and livestreaming and FOAM for secure location services”. [The role of “Signaling” will be explored in the next post]
Deploying Smart Contracts to the FOAM Map
In addition to time released value to accrue through the work put in by Cartographers to the Token Curated Registry, there are additional means to capture rewards or revenue by being the owner or a point. Because the FOAM Map is an open protocol on the blockchain, custom smart contracts can be deployed onto the Map by point owners to open marketplaces, games or any other application that would need to reference Point of Interest data and charge fee’s. Anyone can currently deploy their own smart contracts and interfaces based off of the FOAM Map registry. For example, launching a prediction market on Augur based on how long a point will remain verified. If you are the point owner and confident, you can win in these spatial predication markets. Below are two further high level examples, but the possibilities are completely open to be designed by Cartographers.
As the first example lets look at Blockcities, a project building Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) for architectural buildings around the world by turning them into crypto-collectible. Blockcities will be launching a game to buy, trade and collect digital cities but many of the collectibles being sold represent will real world buildings. These NFTs go beyond point of interest data and entail detailed drawings of the building as well as metadata such as building height, style of design and architect. This information would be valuable to the FOAM Map and owners of NFT versions of buildings can partner with the corresponding point in the registry and peg themselves to the map for visibility. If the building is bought or sold a revenue sharing contract can be executed between the hosting point of the NFT. This is but one example of deploying a smart contract on top of a point of interest in an effort to generate revenue.
Another example of launching a smart contract on top of a point of interest would be launching a subjective TCR or curation market that utilizes a bonding curve, with tokens being staked into the point of interest serving as the reserve token. Curation markets launched on top of a point of interest can utilize a SPACE Token. A SPACE token is any ERC-20 token that also claims a crypto-spatial coordinate address and pegs itself to a location. SPACE Tokens are a sub-token of the protocol that can be used for a variety of different purposes, including as a hard asset and regulatory backed equity token tied to the real world, a membership token in an organization, tokenization of energy usage or any application the creator wants to launch.
The creator of a SPACE Token can set the parameters of the token and also issue a minting schedule over a bonding curve. One of the functions of launching a SPACE Token is a way for Cartographers to respond to consumer demand around a specific Point of Interest by tokenizing attention networks and delivering some wanted utility via a token for that point. FOAM protocol will enable users to build location/spatial applications using highly- coordinated crowdsourced data. When initially generated, SPACE Tokens represent stake in a spatial idea. If coordination allows for goals of proposal to be reached the SPACE token will come to represent utility in the physical point of interest. First as a stake in the attention and coordination of the idea and then to how each space needs to use them: i.e. unlocks the door for entry, allows special access, represents ownership in the activity at the point etc.
The FOAM Map and Token Curated Registries are part of a tokenized and open source protocol. The base purpose and utility is to build a consensus driven map of the world. Markets, games, ideas and tokens can be built on top of points and initiated by Cartographers. We have yet to scratch the surface of potential!
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