Interesting, thanks for the reply! Let me unpack what I’m thinking of when I say “if such a system existed”. Here are some things I’m imagining in such a scenario:
Ideally, there is a market already (not just the potential for one, as that link indicates), or there is a clear plan and a number of EAs that I know the names of who have said that they will participate. I’m willing to be an early adopter, but I’m not in a position where I can vet the fundamentals of the project. For example, I’d like to see people who were involved in the prior attempts to do Certificates of Impact endorsing a plan. Similarly, I’d like to see analysis from a different and identifiable person who is an expert with crypto. I’m just conversant in crypto, and I find most of the writing here to be very somewhat inaccessible due to its length and complexity.
The above is currently my main set of cruxes, but here are a few expanded thoughts on things I’d like to see:
What is the precise plan (not just a discussion of tradeoffs and technical possibilities).
Example: A blog post (or several) detailing exactly how the Certificates of Impact system works, how each type of individual can interact with it in all the expected ways, and what its constraints are. After reading such documentation, someone with close to zero crypto knowledge should be able to participate.
Nice to have: A community-vetted website or portal hosted on a reliable domain that simplifies the interactions in the market so all unneeded and removed complexity and terminology is hidden.
Public scrutiny of the system by identifiable crypto people in the community. At my level of knowledge, the only way that I can feasibly be relatively certain that the system would likely be sane is that I’ve seen it publicly scrutinized by people who are extremely skilled in this sort of thing.
I realize that what I’m asking for is costly. From my perspective, these requirements seem to be pretty fundamental for us actually kickstarting a vibrant impact cert market.
On the flip side, I think there’s a lot of potential for such a system, so I’d see this work as quite plausibly very high impact and thus hopefully a mini-cause around which folks can coordinate. Personally, I can try to rally support once a system exists (see above), but I’m not currently in a position to rally community leaders nor get crypto experts to scrutinize the plan.
Public endorsements from trusted experts in relevant domains, such as crypto, econ, impact certificates, EA-style prioritization. Yes, that’d be great! I’m closest to knowledgeable on the last one, and I’m very concerned about Ofer’s concern above. So I want to come up with a promising solution to that before I move forward at all.
A series of blog posts detailing how different actors can use the system. Yes, very good. I’d also explain the reasoning behind various design decisions in these posts. Something that irks me about a lot of crypto projects is that they have a very specific fine-tuned byzantine architecture that they explain in detail but never mention why they made all these design decisions.
A software that abstracts away all the unnecessary complexity. That is probably something that I’ll need to build gradually as I see signs of adoption. It’d be too easy to waste a year on building a software that no one uses. (I’ve worked for a startup that did that.) So I hope I can do it in a way where the complexity doesn’t itself impede the adoption too much…
On the flip side, I think there’s a lot of potential for such a system, so I’d see this work as quite plausibly very high impact and thus hopefully a mini-cause around which folks can coordinate. Personally, I can try to rally support once a system exists (see above), but I’m not currently in a position to rally community leaders nor get crypto experts to scrutinize the plan.
Interesting, thanks for the reply! Let me unpack what I’m thinking of when I say “if such a system existed”. Here are some things I’m imagining in such a scenario:
Ideally, there is a market already (not just the potential for one, as that link indicates), or there is a clear plan and a number of EAs that I know the names of who have said that they will participate. I’m willing to be an early adopter, but I’m not in a position where I can vet the fundamentals of the project. For example, I’d like to see people who were involved in the prior attempts to do Certificates of Impact endorsing a plan. Similarly, I’d like to see analysis from a different and identifiable person who is an expert with crypto. I’m just conversant in crypto, and I find most of the writing here to be very somewhat inaccessible due to its length and complexity.
The above is currently my main set of cruxes, but here are a few expanded thoughts on things I’d like to see:
What is the precise plan (not just a discussion of tradeoffs and technical possibilities).
Example: A blog post (or several) detailing exactly how the Certificates of Impact system works, how each type of individual can interact with it in all the expected ways, and what its constraints are. After reading such documentation, someone with close to zero crypto knowledge should be able to participate.
Nice to have: A community-vetted website or portal hosted on a reliable domain that simplifies the interactions in the market so all unneeded and removed complexity and terminology is hidden.
Public scrutiny of the system by identifiable crypto people in the community. At my level of knowledge, the only way that I can feasibly be relatively certain that the system would likely be sane is that I’ve seen it publicly scrutinized by people who are extremely skilled in this sort of thing.
I realize that what I’m asking for is costly. From my perspective, these requirements seem to be pretty fundamental for us actually kickstarting a vibrant impact cert market.
On the flip side, I think there’s a lot of potential for such a system, so I’d see this work as quite plausibly very high impact and thus hopefully a mini-cause around which folks can coordinate. Personally, I can try to rally support once a system exists (see above), but I’m not currently in a position to rally community leaders nor get crypto experts to scrutinize the plan.
Awesome, thank you!
Public endorsements from trusted experts in relevant domains, such as crypto, econ, impact certificates, EA-style prioritization. Yes, that’d be great! I’m closest to knowledgeable on the last one, and I’m very concerned about Ofer’s concern above. So I want to come up with a promising solution to that before I move forward at all.
A series of blog posts detailing how different actors can use the system. Yes, very good. I’d also explain the reasoning behind various design decisions in these posts. Something that irks me about a lot of crypto projects is that they have a very specific fine-tuned byzantine architecture that they explain in detail but never mention why they made all these design decisions.
A software that abstracts away all the unnecessary complexity. That is probably something that I’ll need to build gradually as I see signs of adoption. It’d be too easy to waste a year on building a software that no one uses. (I’ve worked for a startup that did that.) So I hope I can do it in a way where the complexity doesn’t itself impede the adoption too much…
Thank you! 😊