User-Aligned Metrics Changing Media
This is a standalone essay under 500 words on Day 2 of the Tech Progressives Writing Challenge 2, also join build_ to connect.
From Finance to Health to ...?
Balaji talked about several open problems in crypto infrastructure. One of these problems was about User-Aligned Metrics.
Measuring pageviews changed the media industry completely. It made paid advertising measurable and much more scalable. Unfortunately, this revolution turned into strong competition for clicks and promotion of click-bait. Thus, multiple problems arise like quantity over quality, fake news, inefficient advertising, etc.
Crypto might solve this problem potentially. With user-aligned metrics one might measure the result after reading an article. Thus, you could actually know, if a certain newspaper is useful for you or not.
Let me give you some examples:
(1) A financial blog is posting five weekly trading ideas. You connect your wallet and copy two of the five trading ideas. After, both sides get feedback. You get the result of the trade. The blog gets the result of all people who also copied the trade and perhaps 1% of every profit.
(2) A fitness blogger creates a workout for weight loss. You connect your wallet and commit a certain deposit (200$) that you would feel comfortable with paying for losing 5kg. Then you connect your apple watch to prove you attended all online workouts. If you did not lose weight after the new workout program, you get the money back, otherwise you pay in full.
The general idea is clear, the exact implementation is not.
However, I think it might be possible. Currently, I am trading on morpher.com which is actually completely based on smart contracts. All my trades can be seen on-chain. If you would have followed my trades, you would have made around 400% in the last 12 months.
My trades on-chain (proof-of-profit): https://scan.morpher.com/address/0x5153064BcEAF5BD50891B5889D6d6ca54cB9972d/token-transfers
As you can see media could change from attention seeking click-bait to a win and help win mentality.
Especially, areas that directly benefit you, will profit from this change. If someone makes a great trade, you profit. If you become healthier, you profit. If you read a very insightful article, you profit.
Thus, especially financial blogs might become much more scalable as they can tap into a new "profit-share" income stream. For the reader its also an obvious decision to follow a financial blog that actually makes money for them, rather than paying 10$ a month for something you are not sure about.
Once again, truth is king. To quote from my favorite movies: "I think the power is in the truth, Whoever is right is strong". Web2 is all talk, Web3 is all truth, backed-up by the blockchain. Thus, truth will be provable and extremely valuable.
Obviously, a lot of questions remain:
- How can we ensure that information, like trades, is not copied for free?
- How can we actually monetize content that does not have direct monetary value like historical information, politics, etc?
- How exactly would such a platform look like? Or is it actually just a "smart contract"-based widget that you can integrate to your website?