Token Weighted Crowdsourcing is a topic introduced by Falk and Tsoukalas in their paper on the topic. The mechanism behind Steem is essentially a form of token weighted crowdsourcing. In my opinion this mechanism is one of the management fundamental tools by which the market can generate desired behaviors and by which decisions can be arrived at. In the case of Steem there is a reward pool (shared resource) and the primary decision the network must make is on how to allocate these resources. 

In a comment I put forth the concept that someday a community may want to maintain an alignment between their moral values and resource allocation. I mentioned that these platforms or technologies do not have to be designed to be amoral. In fact, we have the opportunity to design technologies which have a capacity for morality on a level far beyond what any human run institution is capable of. This article will go into some of the technical concepts and technologies which might form the building blocks for truly useful decentralized applications.

The Trusted Execution Environment
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This is the technology which in essence is a secure area of a micro processor which can guarantee both integrity and confidentiality.  The theory behind information security is the CIA triad which is data confidentiality, integrity, and availability.  The blockchain protects integrity based on the fact that once data is written in the blockchain it cannot be erased. The blockchain allows for write operations only. The blockchain allows for persistent (forever storage) of the data because it's stored in what is like a decentralized transparent shared database or distributed cloud like infrastructure. In my opinion the availability of blockchain technology is protected by the fact that it's decentralized and accessible (in some cases even from space). 

The impact of the Trusted Execution Environment is now it is possible to complete the CIA triad. We gain confidentiality of the data on top of the other benefits of integrity and availability. As a result, TEE dramatically improves the security of the crypto space in terms of the security gained for the cost. An argument could be made that Proof of Work offers a certain kind of security (integrity and availability) at a very high cost. TEE is currently the most efficient known way of allowing for encrypted data to be computed which opens the door to "Secret Contracts" and "Secret Nodes" which are pioneered by the Enigma Project. In essence the TEE produces the capacity for programmers to create encrypted black boxes where computation can take place on behalf of decentralized applications without revealing or leaking any data.

Token Curated Registries 
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TCRs are what programmers call a "design pattern".  Just as blockchain is a data structure, and a data structure is a data organization, storage and management format, what we have with TCR is a means of working we curated lists. Curated lists are very powerful design patterns because of the near limitless versatility they can afford.  When you do collaborative filtering such as upvotes and downvotes then you have a mechanism by which you can produce a curated ranked list. That is a list of objects or items with different scores which can be sorted by the score they received for instance.

Token Curated Registries as a design pattern are extremely synergistic with "Secret Contracts"/TEE.  The Enigma Project researchers have shown how to effectively do [Private Voting for TCRs with Enigma](https://blog.enigma.co/private-voting-for-tcrs-with-enigma-b441b5d4fa7b). In other words, the specifications for many solutions are known and the information is being diffused through blogs.  What makes TCRs so unique is that you can have a completely decentralized list, which can be curated in any way you like, to rank items, to reward according to rankings, the uses are almost endless. TEE and Secret Contracts provide the privacy layer to make these lists not a mere toy but a major breakthrough. 

In some of my other posts I discuss Tauchain and the reason I keep bringing it up is because I see it as a major breakthrough on a level similar to these breakthroughs. The idea of a self modifying protocol is essentially the essence of what Tauchain does. The ability to in essence use Tau to create Tauchain is novel and is based on the nomic structure. To understand the nomic structure review the paper by Vreeswijk from 1995. Tau in essence works on rules, facts, and reasoning, where there is a decidable logic (suitable for laws) and there is the meta language so that formal specifications can be arrived at through discussion which scales. 

When we look at what Tau can do (self modifying protocol/self modifying code) and if we look at similar attempts from Tezos then we can see what TCRs on combination with these breakthroughs. TEE along with TCR for example could allow for crowd sentiment to drive development (via discussion of the specification and  program synthesis). In the case of Tau a lot of stuff could be automated but there will in my opinion be a need for dispute resolution protocols. I could see TCR being used in combination with sentiment analysis. 

The problem is there will be no way to do sentiment analysis without at minimum TEE to protect the votes or to conduct the surveys. In other words the quantified will of the crowd can be captured to provide feedback to anyone within the crowd. The ability to poll or to ask the crowd in my opinion is essential to dispute avoidance and dispute resolution. If different sides in an argument both think they are doing what is best for the crowd then the only way to really know what the crowd wants is to survey the crowd. In addition the only way to really know what the crowd likes is to have some quantified evidence of what the crowd likes and that kind of data might have to be private. 


Token Curated Crowdsourcing and [Links that Reward](https://medium.com/2key/essential-concepts-for-understanding-the-2key-network-c089b0bdac70)
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- Collaboration requires incentivization 
- Social sourcing is a mechanism of talent acquisition. If you have what I like to call "social wealth" then this would allow you to potentially get token rewards for leveraging that social wealth. Of course it's just known as "referral marketing".
- Multi-step tracking is possible through and reward networks can be created which track for example links being shared and which rewards participants for going along. 

The Links that Reward mechanism is what creates contagious decentralized value transfer networks. In other words a smart contract will be able to implement any kind of referral marketing or loyalty rewards with unprecedented accuracy. 

The Token Weighted Crowdsourcing would allow for jobs to be created around these smart contracts. The way to get hired? You receive the link from a referrer in your social network. If the smart contract is looking for a specific kind of entity which matches specific criteria or which has specific metrics then this could be included.

Imagine your friend Sara sends you a link which requires you to take some specific action. If you take the action then it produces a "conversion" which unlocks the reward for taking that action. 

References
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Asgaonkar, A., & Krishnamachari, B. (2018). Token Curated Registries-A Game Theoretic Approach. arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.01756.

Asor, O. (2015). About Tau-Chain. arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.04120.

Falk, B. H., & Tsoukalas, G. (2018). Token Weighted Crowdsourcing.