BrightID's Attention Streams

BrightID's Attention Streams is a system that aims to address the challenges of governance systems that allow money to enter in undesirable ways. It aims to expose and defeat the dysfunctionality of systems where certain actors can perpetuate rules that are disproportionately advantageous to themselves, making it difficult for others to come together to oppose them. The purpose of Attention Streams is to apply familiar strategies from the economic domain, such as quickly identifying popular ideas and making them work in the governance domain. When people discover that they can make money through this method, their participation will lead to increased funding for public goods and better rules for themselves in economic systems with significant effects. Voting rights in Attention Streams are generated in a way that allows early discoverers of good ideas to stake less capital than latecomers, and latecomers can receive rewards based on the attention given to early discoverers.

Attention Streams can be used for various purposes such as discovering public goods, fundraising, allocating rights to shared resources, attracting attention to proposals, and promoting idea generation. They can be used to set rules for governments, DAOs, markets, and other Attention Streams. The design of Attention Streams involves creating arenas (rule boundaries) for collections of topics (things to be governed or decided). Topics are potential outcomes in the form of competing rules or decisions within the arena. Designers can create new topics within an arena, and contributors can add choices to topics. Topics and choices must adhere to the rules set by the designer, or they will face disputes. Examples of arenas, topics, and choices are provided in the use case examples.

Contributors help determine the outcome by acquiring shares of options that may potentially be rewarded. The funds to realize the options are collected from contributors who support the options. Contributors who support popular options can be rewarded early. In contrast to traditional voting systems where the value of a single vote is minimal, contributors in Attention Streams can directly benefit economically from their choices. Attention Streams are similar to registries, prediction markets, futures markets, future keys, and token curation registries, with each entry having its own bonding curve. Attention Streams can be used to set the rules for such systems.

Attention Streams have similarities to conviction voting, as contributors can allocate voting rights among multiple options and the voting is automatically strengthened over time. However, Attention Streams differ in that funds can be obtained directly from voting actions, in addition to external sources. The purpose of Attention Streams is to enable contributors to earn money in the economic domain by quickly discovering popular ideas and making them work in the governance domain. When people discover that they can make money through this method, their participation will lead to increased funding for public goods and better rules for themselves in economic systems with significant effects.

The design of Attention Streams includes the creation of arenas (rule boundaries) by designers for collections of topics (things to be governed or decided). Choices are potential outcomes in the form of competing rules or decisions within the topics, and they must adhere to the rules set by the designer to avoid disputes. Designers can create new topics within an arena, and contributors can add choices to topics. Topics and choices can have their own funds to reward designers and other initiatives. External funds can be applied to the funds of topics. The number of tokens that can be applied to choices may be limited by the token supply and, in some cases, by the reputation of contributors.

The design of arenas includes determining rules regarding the acceptable range of topics and choices, prohibiting duplicate topics, handling disputes for topics and choices that violate the rules, and providing a dispute resolution framework. The design also includes the use of tokens, minimum contribution levels for contributors (to protect against spam), reputation systems (if applicable), and the correspondence between reputation and the number of tokens held by contributors.

The design of topics involves determining the acceptable range of choices and the rules for executing them, prohibiting duplicate choices, objecting to choices that violate the rules, determining the frequency of share distribution (e.g., every 24 hours), and determining the number of shares each position acquires per cycle (based on the percentage of tokens in the position). Topics can be executable, and the duration for which a choice among competing choices is not viable can be determined. Topics can have their own funds and external funds can be applied to them.

The design of choices includes providing a description of the choice, ensuring compliance with the rules of the arena and topic, and making the results enforceable. Choices can have their own funds (if allowed by the arena and topic) and the location of the choice fund can be determined. Fees can be taken as a percentage of each contribution to the choice fund, and there can be a target amount for the choice fund. Once the target amount is reached, the choice will no longer accept donations. There are limitations on fees, such as the arena fee must be less than 100%, the sum of the topic fee, contributor fee, and arena fee must be less than 100%, and the sum of the choice fee, topic fee, contributor fee, and arena fee must be less than 100%.

In Attention Streams, contributors hold positions (combinations of shares and tokens) in one or more choices. Positions include tokens contributed and tokens acquired from subsequent contributors. Contributors acquire shares of positions each cycle based on their contribution. When tokens are withdrawn from a position, shares are lost. The time factor plays a crucial role in Attention Streams. Positions continuously acquire shares, reducing the cost of maintaining support for choices (while the cost of adding support increases). This encourages contributors to seek new opportunities rather than stacking what has already been discovered. Topics may naturally disappear when the ranking of choices becomes fixed.

The example provided illustrates how shares reward contributors. In the example, 20% of contributions are paid to contributors (proportional to their share holdings), and shares are generated at a rate of 100% per token per cycle. Contributors A, B, and C add and withdraw positions in the same choice.

In cycle 1, contributors A and B each purchase 10 token-equivalent shares. In cycle 2, contributors A and B acquire 10 shares each based on their token holdings. Contributor C purchases 20 token-equivalent shares. In cycle 3, contributors A, B, and C acquire shares based on their token holdings. Contributor A adds 10 more tokens to their position. In cycle 4, contributors A, B, and C acquire shares based on their token holdings. Contributor B burns 23.36 shares and withdraws 6.36 tokens.

Overall, Attention Streams provide a mechanism for contributors to participate in governance systems and be directly rewarded for their contributions. The system is designed to incentivize early signaling and reduce the cost of maintaining support for choices. It also allows for relative support rates based on the size of funding goals and supports secondary support measures. The time-based cycles in Attention Streams prevent front-running and provide a fair distribution of shares.