Basic Validation Layer - Validator's Merit

[gil-air-may]

This discussion assumes that the voting system used by validators is transparent. In other words, that anyone in the community can check any validator's decision on any paper.

According to the Proof of Idea algorithm we have:

"If the consensus among the validators surpasses the threshold for consenus (some percentage, e.g. 50 %), the idea gets published in the network and there will be associated token generation and reward sharing event".

This democratic system is responsible for maintaining OSO network free of spam and other irrelevant content. Since the validator's vote is so important, we should create mechanisms to encourage meaningful participation in voting process.

In order to achieve this, we can distribute some kind of reward for validators who vote responsibly. However, it is still complicated to define responsibility in this context, since user's opinions are (most likely) diverse. IMHO, I think we should still create some community guidelines even if there is a lot of controversy around the subject of good / bad content.

On the other hand, I think there should be some kind of penalty for those who are not concerned about the votes they cast. Let's say user1 gets chosen as a validator, and decides to choose against publishing a certain idea 1. At the end of the voting session, the only one who opposed was user1. So, is user1 trolling? What happens then?

I believe it is important to avoid cases such as:

• Not having enough members participate the voting process
• Validator votes, but has not read the paper / idea thoroughly.
• Validator approves publication, but paper has inappropriate content.
• Ill-intentioned validator votes against publishing what is (apparently) a good idea.

Let me know what you guys think about this.

[himalayajung]

Purpose of the basic validation layer
The basic validation layer is similar to the vetting layer in preprints and its purpose is to filter out spam contents not to distinguish contents as good or bad. An analogy of a content or an idea (e.g. publication) would be a transaction in Bitcoin network. In Bitcoin, it is trivial to verify the validity of a transaction whereas it is difficult to algorithmically verify if a publication is a garbage or an idea that merits to be added in the basic idea list in layer 1. It needs human intervention and that's where come the validators.

How does validation layer help?
-Storage cost: the basic validation layer makes sure that OSO network is hosting only non-spam ideas not some garbage contents
-Clean organizaiton:
-Confidence to build higher layers on the top of L1

Incentive Structure for Validators
There is already a basic incentive structure (binary) in the basic validation layer since only the validators who voted are rewarded with the newly minted tokens. There is no penalty for wrong vote or no vote and no additional reward for correct vote. To incorporate these elements, we can add linear incentive structure like Augur where validators have to stake their tokens to participate in the validaton process. But I think we should stick with the simple validation layer at least initially for two reasons. First, since everything is open (i.e. who voted what), it is expected that the entities will vote in good faith. Second, this might over-complicate the process making the researchers reluctant to use OSO ecosystem.

For now, let's focus on getting the basic validaton layer up and running. But in future, we should definitely consider replacing the binary incentive structure with a linear one. What we can do is make a common module (or use someone else's) for linear incentive structure (e.g. staking) and use it at different validation layers by tweaking its features as needed.