The Outlet Overview

# The Outlet Overview ## The short utilitarian description The Outlet is a decentralized application that allows individuals to interact anonymously, but provide accountability to their peers by earning reputation as good actors. In this way participants can hold on to their individual privacy, but as a group weed out anyone acting inappropriately. Behavior that is in-line with the character of a community is rewarded with positive reputation, while out-of-line behavior loses reputation. **A participant must stake their reputation on their interactions, and community members vote on whether or not an interaction is appropriate for the character of their community. An affirmative vote yields positive reputation for the participant, while a negative vote causes them to lose the reputation they staked.** The Outlet is the first step towards privacy-enabled marketplaces where humans can find each other, communicate, and transact safely without revealing contextually unnecessary aspects of their identity. ## How it works conceptually The Outlet uses group affiliation to mask individual identity. When an individual makes a post, they do so anonymously, but it gets broadcast from a group Persona. Through a group Persona an individual may communicate with the world, without revealing themselves. Picture a room of people with a door but no windows. It's impossible for anyone outside the room to see who or what is inside. But a large monitor has been attached to the outside wall, so communications originating from inside the room can get displayed and viewed by the world at large. The criteria for entry into the room is everyone must wear the same mask, thus guaranteeing individual anonymity. Anyone inside can propose a communication they think is fit to be broadcast on the outside monitor; a message they believe is representative of the character of the community in the room. Everyone else inside the room votes on whether or not the message is in fact in character, and majority rules. If the majority believes the message is representative, it gets broadcast by the outside monitor. If not, the message goes nowhere. Now imagine the message contains a product offering. Anyone outside the room interested in that product might not know the identity of the seller, but they would know the seller's offer is in-line with the character of the community in the room. If a buyer trusts the character of the community, it's probable they can trust the character of the seller. ## How it works specifically (include app screens) 1. A Player connects their web3 enabled wallet to The Outlet protocol. This gives them the ability to anonymously play as any group identity we call a "Persona", listed in the app. 2. The Player chooses the Persona they want to play as, and the Persona page opens with details about the group and a timeline of Posts. 3. The Posts are content submitted by other anonymous Players, that have been deemed representative of the character of the Persona. 4. A Player who submits a Post must stake their reputation on it. 5. Posts go through an adjudication period where other Players vote on whether or not the Post is representative of the character of the Persona. If deemed representative, the Post gets broadcast on the Persona's general timeline. If not, the Post gets archived. 6. A Player whose Post is deemed representative receives reputation that can be viewed publicly, even though their identity remains private. A Player whose post is deemed inconsistent loses the reputation they staked when submitting their Post for adjudication. 7. Players who vote with the majority also receive reputation; their reward for helping maintain the character of the Persona. ### Key definitions #### Player: A user who has connected their wallet to The Outlet protocol. A Player may anonymously post on the timeline of a Persona, promote or demote other posts, comment on posts, and earn reputation when other community members promote their posts. #### Persona: The group identity a Player may post as. Think of a Persona as the avatar of a community, where any community member may post as that avatar. Personas may take on the appearance of an individual with a story and motivations, a brand with a logo that curates content, an association or union of people in the same vocation, etc. Each Persona has its own timeline where Players make posts. Other Players may decide to “promote” or “demote” that post, depending on if they think it represents the character of the community. #### Post: A content container that is viewed in a Persona’s timeline, or in a general timeline. Posts may include copy, images, videos, or other pieces of content. Posts may be used to share information for inspiration and fun, or can be used to offer a product or service for sale. A Player must stake their reputation on posts they submit. The Post goes through an adjudication period where other Players vote on whether it should be “Promoted” (meaning in-line with the character of the Persona) or “Demoted”. If at the end of adjudication the post is deemed “Promoted” (more votes for Promoted than Demoted), the Post shows up on the Persona’s main timeline. A Player who submits a Post that gets "Promoted" earns reputation, as does every player who voted in-line with the majority. A Player who submits a Post that gets "Demoted" loses the reputation they staked on their Post. #### Promote/Demote A Player may take certain actions on a Post. They may make a comment, and vote on whether to Promote or Demote it. To Promote is to signal that a Post is appropriate for the character of a community. To Demote is to signal that a Post is inappropriate for the character of a community. A Player may put “weight” behind their choice to Promote or Demote. Each Player has up to 30 units of weight called “Votes” they may use in a 24 hour time frame. #### Epoch A defined time frame. In the case of The Outlet, an Epoch is 12 hours. There are two Epochs of concern. 1. The adjudication period for a new Post is 1 Epoch long. 2. A Player receives 30 new Votes at the beginning of every Epoch. Unused votes do not carry over to the next Epoch. ## The purpose of The Outlet ### Backdrop Humans use reputation to determine who is safe to interact with. This is vital for the human experience. We are social creatures, and we have to work together to get the best outcomes for ourselves, our families, and the global community. But in order to safely work together we must have some way to determine who is trustworthy, and who is not. That's why reputation arbiters formed; organizations that attest a person is of good character. Some examples are: banks, guilds, certification associations, and even governments. More recently, social media platforms like Twitter, and commerce platforms like Amazon. But allowing these centralized organizations to dictate reputation comes with costs. For one, in order to prove reputation they insist on capturing a broad assortment of personal information that often has nothing to do with specific user needs. This allows them to sell user data for profit, and also leaves them susceptible to data breaches that yield identity theft. For another, if a user takes a reputational hit in one type of interaction, it can cause total reputation cancellation. Even if an infraction is small (or not even an infraction at all), when a reputation arbiter decides a user is no longer fit to participate, they can have the user's account closed, the user removed from a platform, or removed from society in general. This is a terrible cost for an individual, but it also leads to conformity and self-censorship in ways that damage pubic discourse. It is diverse skill sets, and diverse opinions and thoughts that lead to the best outcomes for humanity. Stifling them is to the detriment of progress. ### Reputation in context We believe that reputation is only useful when paired with context. For example, that someone is a licensed driver has no bearing on the probability of whether or not they'll make good on a retail purchase. A buyer in a retail setting needs to know if the seller has a history of fulfilling their orders; not their age, political affiliation, or even their name. The seller only needs to know that the buyer has the necessary amount of funds to complete the transaction. As you can see, only a tiny amount of information is needed in that context; far less than the full identity profile we're used to providing in such situations. Even if the buyer and seller don't expect more than that, as it stands now, in order to pay or receive money for a purchase, both parties are participating in a banking system that requires full identity disclosure. The situation is the same in online social communities like Twitter. While it's important to know the person you're interacting with is not a bad actor or a bot, asking someone to give up their identity for safety sake, puts them in harms way of cancellation by whomever grants that reputation. So, it's clear humanity would greatly benefit from anonymous, context-specific reputation, to limit cancellation while still providing accountability. That's why we're building The Outlet. ### The Outlet as community curation Through gameplay in the Outlet, anonymous Players are building their individual reputation and curating the character of their community at the same time. When a Player submits a Post, because they are staking their reputation in it, they are signaling their desire to perpetuate the character of the Persona (Post in the best interest of the Persona). But they are also signaling their desire to "wear the mask of the Persona", affixing the Persona's group reputation to their Post. Cloaked in a Persona, an anonymous Player may interact with the greater world knowing they will be evaluated on the content of their Post, and the character of the group. And anyone who interacts with said anonymous Player can get a sense of their character without knowing their identity. Anonymity with accountability. For peace and prosperity. ### A quick but sincere thank you Big thanks to [Unirep](https://medium.com/privacy-scaling-explorations/unirep-a-private-and-non-repudiable-reputation-system-7fb5c6478549) and [Semaphore](https://semaphore.appliedzkp.org/) for pioneering zero knowledge anonymous reputation, and anonymous reputation through group affiliation.