Profit Sharing Communities

Overview

This model is the simplest representation of how a web3 scientific ecosystem could function. Essentially, it is a variation of the Web3 Sustainability Loop where researchers are still competing for funding from an exhaustible funding agency, but instead of publishing their results to centralized knowledge curators, they publish to the web3 knowledge market, which allows them to retain ownership of their data, articles, algorithms, etc. whilst still sharing your work with the scientific community.

schema of the web3 profit sharing model

The knowledge market allows researchers to publish their results at any stage of their research, so naturally, it is also the perfect place to get all the necessary resources for research.

Parameters

In this model, the proposal parameters have been extended for tracking higher resolution evaluation by the DAO Treasury. These now include:

• grant_requested

• assets_generated

• no_researchers

• time: how long the research project is going to take (used by the DAO Treasury to know when to fund a new proposal)

• knowledge_access

• integration: number between 0 and 1, used to track the depth of a research project

• novelty: number between 0 and 1, abstraction of the novelty and innovation of a research project

• impact: number between 0 and 10, dependent on both integration and novelty

Behavior

1. Initial Conditions: All agents have a fixed amount of OCEAN to begin with (DAO Treasury has the most) | KnowledgeMarket has 1 knowledge asset

2. ResearcherAgents submit their proposals (with some parameters fixed and some randomized, see the baseline description above)

3. DAO Treasury algorithmically determines the winner and sends them the requested amount of OCEAN

4. The winner (Researcher) uses part of the funding (determined by a fixed ratio) to buy a DT from the KnowledgeMarket and immediately consumes it to gain knowledge_access += 1. Then the remainder of OCEAN is used to publish results and new assets to the KnowledgeMarket. (Note: the KnowledgeMarket takes fees from buying the DT and sends them to DAO Treasury and Staker (ratio determined algorithmically))

5. The loser (Researcher) uses part of their own money to buy a DT and immediately consume it to gain knowledge_access += 1 (same thing with fees as before)

6. Staker stakes all the rewards received in this round (so that next time, the rewards will be greater)

7. New Research Round Steps 1-2 repeated

8. Same as (5) with the exception that the OCEAN spent for the DT is now transferred to the owners of assets in the KnowledgeMarket, i.e. the previous winners of the grants (when both Researchers have assets in the KnowledgeMarket, the OCEAN is split between them according to the ratio of the number of assets they published).

Limitations

This model inevitably has some limitations. Firstly, it is hard to say whether having a guarantee of getting funded at some point is desirable. While it ensures a fair competition, we are also assuming the researchers are all doing research of comparable quality and importance and that no researchers have malicious incentives.

Further Reading