Hi all, loving this project. Been thinking about CRED.
I want to use it for our project to track contributions over time and reward people with our native bonding-curve based token.
I’m wondering: can CRED ever be taken away? If a contribution becomes LESS relevant over time, can the CRED get adjusted? Thus effecting the future grain payouts?
Basically we want to set it up in such a way that the founders today will be well rewarded, but not for a say hundreds of years.
We want contributions to be slowly LESS rewarded over time. So that new contributions are relatively better rewarded over time (and dont have to compete with massive amount of historic contributions).
I realize this may also come down to the grain distribution algorithm, but I’m not sure I fully comprehend if that can fulfill this equity-renewal requirement I just described?
For example, can the grain distribution be tweaked so that for example contributions get rewarded with grain for 10 years (and slowly relatively less over the years)?
Cred is never given, so neither is it taken away. Unlike grain, cred
isn’t an asset that you own. It’s a fluctuating number that’s
retroactive: if a contribution becomes more or less relevant/valuable
over time, its cred will increase or decrease, respectively. So, to the
spirit of your question, “yes”.
We typically don’t directly decrease cred for contributions simply
because they’re old. We say that cred doesn’t decay, but it does
dilute: as new, valuable contributions are added, older ones begin to
dwindle.
For example, Euclid still has cred for his foundational work on
geometry, but many other people have enriched the field in the past 2000
years. Thus, Euclid’s cred is diluted, even though his contributions are
still respected. By contrast, much of the work of the Italian school of
algebraic geometers was later found to be completely wrong, so their
cred has retroactively plummeted, not due to dilution but because we no
longer think that the contributions are as valuable.
I realize this may also come down to the grain distribution algorithm
Yes: the “recent” grain distribution strategy is meant to achieve the
kind of thing that you’re looking for. The SourceCred community uses a
mix of “recent” and “balanced” (all-time) distribution strategies, with
a heavy bias to the recent strategy (4-to-1 at time of writing) to
better reward new contributions and new contributors, exactly as you
describe.
Great & quick answer, that clarifies it perfectly and confirms my assumption.
The mix of strategies is interesting. If I understand correctly you’re simply distributing a certain percentage of new grain with one distribution strategy (say recent) and a certain percentage with another (say balanced)? That’s really flexible and clever yet easy!