A brief description of Token Bonding Curvese and Curation Markets, with theoretical examples of their application.

1. Intro to Curation Markets
Jeff Emmett - Full Circle Digital Marketing

2. Note: This can be an obscure topic, so we’ll keep it high level
as much as possible.
I’m no expert on the topic, but I’m happy to share what
I know & we can learn together!
Questions can be asked throughout.

3. How Do We Solve Today’s
Intractable Problems
● Climate change
● Pollution & resource depletion
● Global social inequality
● We have found limits to the effectiveness of
traditional organizational hierarchies
○ Governments & corporations are unwilling or unable
to take collective action on global issues
○ Lack of transparency, speed & efficiency

4. Where Do We Find New Solutions?
● How can we collaborate & make decisions as a
large collective without organized leadership?
● Learn from nature: self-organizing systems that
direct themselves based on environmental cues
○ Ant colonies - pheromone trails
○ Immune system - cytokenes (chemical signals)
○ Mycelium - availability of water & nutrients
● This is called stigmergy

5. Stigmergy is a consensus mechanism of
indirect coordination between agents through
environmental stimuli. It produces complex,
seemingly intelligent structures, without need
for any planning, control, or even direct
communication between the agents.
- Wikipedia

6. In Search of Decentralized Collaboration
How can we create value signals in human
networks to direct collaborative action
without central authority?
● This already exists in the form of
capitalism & market forces
● How can we utilize market forces to
incentivize initiatives for social good?

7. Tackling the Big Problems:
A New Global Cooperation Framework
For the first time ever, we can decentrally fund important global
projects and reward individual actions carried out to help
achieve that goal, without top-down organized leadership.
● Like a charity or NGO, but without the bureaucracy
The possibilities are as impactful as they are endless:
● Make it profitable to protect the commons
○ Attach value to raw resources & conservation
● Give everybody on the planet an equal chance to achieve
their full potential
○ Fund a global universal basic income (UBI)
● Incentivize global clean up efforts
○ Bounties for provable trash collection

8. How to Apply Market Forces to Social Good:
Token Bonding Curves (aka Automatic Market Makers)
A new token generation model (vs ICO):
● A project token can be minted at any time
according to a price curve set by the smart
contract for that project
● This price gets more expensive as more
project tokens are in circulation
● At any point in time, a project token can be
sold (“burned”), and a portion of the communal
deposit is paid out according to the price curve
set by the project smart contract
● The amount paid for the project token is kept
in a communal deposit, and is not disbursed to
any particular person or team.
1 #PT = 1 ETH
#Token
1 #PT = 2 ETH
1 #PT = 3 ETH

9. Sample Token Bonding Curves
● Varying buy/sell bonding curve introduces interesting incentives & behaviour
○ Discourage pump & dump
○ Encourage holding/optimal level of users
○ Donate difference between buy/sell price to project beneficiary

10. Token Bonding:
A New Token Generation Model
● Avoid complications of ICOs & one-time token generation models
○ Circumvent legal considerations (all via smart contract)
○ Less organizational complexity & reliance on founding team
○ Align incentives between teams, token buyers & other stakeholders (same pool of funds)
○ Funding less dependent on ICO hype cycle, but rather success of ongoing project & resulting interest
● Low barrier to entry for tokenized projects, creating emergent networks of value
● Continuous, decentralized token issuance on an as needed basis, without a central issuer
● Simple, generic implementation allows any project to scaffold & scale rapidly, and naturally
dissolve if it is no longer needed
● Token bonding curves allow for unique buy/hold/sell incentive discovery, rewarding early
adopters & active participants

11. Example Project: Trash Hero
● Weekly volunteer beach cleanups across Thailand. Donations
purchase supplies for clean ups.
● How do we get more resources to grow the project?
○ We apply market forces through a token bonding curve to
incentivize donations/investments & create network effects
tied the success of the project
● Issue #TrashHeroCoin using a token bonding curve to create a
networked bounty

12. How Does it Work?
● Jeff creates a smart contract token bonding curve to issue
#TrashHeroCoin (#THC) tokens
● Jeff specifies in the smart contract that 50% of the total #THC tokens can
be used by the Trash Hero project
● Jeff deposits 1 ETH, collecting 100 #THC
● Bob likes the project Jeff created, and also deposits 1 ETH, collecting 90
#THC
● Alice also deposits 1 ETH, collecting 80 #THC
● 3 ETH in communal deposit. 270 #THC tokens issued in total, 135 of
which are available to Trash Hero to fund their efforts

13. Then What?
● Jeff organizes a beach cleanup in Thailand, offering 5 #THC from the
pool of project tokens for each participant with provable trash cleanup
○ Direct payment to participants for accomplishing socially beneficial goals,
verified by the blockchain.
○ Re-prioritizing social incentives!
● As word spreads about the value created around this positive social
endeavour, philanthropists/local businesses/investors want to participate
to further the common cause, and potentially turn a profit.
● 1000 more #THC coins are purchased
● Jeff’s original 100 #THC coins, half of which have gone towards clean up
projects, are now worth far more than the original 1 ETH he put in. He
decides to sell 10 #THC to reclaim his initial donation of 1 ETH.

14. Stepping Back & Bringing It Full Circle
● Traditional organizations that are seeking to solve global
problems are slow & inefficient
● With Token Bonding Curves, we can progress from
traditional organizations to decentralized, self-organizing
networks powered by market forces & network effects
● By aligning the profit motive with socially beneficial
behaviour, we mimic the way self-organizing systems in
nature survive & thrive
● We find ourselves with a global fundraising network with
complete donor transparency as to where funds are
allocated. These funds pay people to perform tasks that
accomplish social good within their communities.

15. Back to the Example...
● As the Trash Hero movement grows in popularity and value, more and more beach cleanups are
organized around the world, funded by #THC. Bob realizes that the #THC community is
inundated with arbitrary cleanup statistics offered by members of the network, with no way to
organize the information into what is relevant or useful. Since no one is in charge of that (like a
traditional stats dept in an NGO), it’s all a mess!
● Bob, who is an expert statistician, decides to create even more value in the TrashHero network,
and create a CURATION MARKET of stats information for the project.

16. “Curation Markets are a new type of
organizational model that allows groups to
more effectively coordinate & earn from value
they co-create around shared goals.”
- Simon de la Rouviere, Consensys

17. What is a Curation Market?
● Coordinating global projects requires a shared
understanding of relevant information.
○ How does relevant info surface, without organized
direction? (e.g. a stats dept in an NGO)
● Enter Curation Markets
○ Like a decentralized knowledge base with profit
incentives for good information curation & corrective
action for bad curation
● New cryptoeconomic primitive
○ A building block for decentralized projects

18. Back to the Example...
● Bob STAKES 10 #THC to #THC.statistics and gets to work ranking
the usefulness of information he finds in the #THC network
● Alice thinks Bob is doing great work. She also stakes 5 coins to
Bob, to add to his weight in voting power. Jeff thinks he can curate
good stats information too, so he stakes 5 coins to himself to also
vote & weigh in on what statistics matter most. All of a sudden,
relevant stats information floats to the top of this curation market,
for easy and accessible use by the rest of the network.
● The more that curated information is used, the more Jeff & Bob
earn from the #TrashHeroCoin network

19. Market Forces for Fairness
● Charlie the troll comes along to mess things up. He puts bad information into the
system.
● Alice may be fooled by the information, but Bob & Jeff recognize the bad
information and downvote it. Given their greater weight in the stats curation market,
the information sinks below less relevant, more accurate information.
● In the event that Jeff or Bob use their weight to curate bad information, the market
system will lose faith in them, and reduce their stake in the network, reducing their
network income
● Market forces prioritize good information, disincentivize bad actors
● Users own the value they create from curating good information
● Curation market for #THC.finance, #THC.cleanups, #THC...

20. Utilizing Cryptoeconomic Primitives:
Another Example of Networked Bounties
Traditional Bounties Networked Bounties
● Token bonding curve is used to create
#BountiesfortheOceans token based on ETH
donations
● Creates closed-loop economy around global
plastic cleanup goal
○ Value of #BftO token increases with project
success & continued funding
○ Donation & funding of social good can also be an
investment
○ Re-prioritizing social incentives to create profit from
carrying out socially beneficial behaviour
● Curation market could exist to curate information
on #BftO.stats or #BftO.cleanups

21. Curation Markets: Wrap Up
● Provide meaningful value signals to assist in coordinating large collective groups
○ Users find bonded value & participate to increase & share in that value according to their
niche expertise
○ No direction required - stigmergy!
But...
● Curation markets are still new & untested, many problems remain to be resolved
● Many minds & projects are working on them
● Still much experimentation to come - many failures no doubt, but through trial & error we can
hope to see optimized Curation Markets in the future

22. Projects & Uses of Curation Markets
● Monetizing open source projects
○ OScoin
● Incentivizing quality news curation, combating fake/inaccurate news
○ Relevant News Reader
● AI Curation Markets
○ SingularityNet
● Reputation weighted TCRs
○ Weeve Network
● Geospatial coordinate curation
○ FOAM Space
● Social discovery curation
○ Way Network
● Curation of data pools
○ Ocean Protocol

23. Further Reading
● Curation Markets Whitepaper
● Curation Markets on Token Engineering
● Bonding Curves & Continuous Token Generation
● Saving the Planet: Making it Profitable to Protect the Commons
● Funding Network Effects on Bounties
● Starships & Tokens
● TCR Reading List
● Contrary opinions on Cryptoeconomic Primitives

24. Thanks for
Listening!
Questions?
Jeff Emmett
Co-Founder
Full Circle Digital Marketing
Calgary, AB
info@fullcircledigitalmarketing.ca