Long term funding model via advertising

[peter]

As repellent as it is to look towards the web’s dominant model (advertising via data extraction from free content producers via the web and social networks) there may actually be a decent, ethical model for the co-operative world.

How would it work?

As the system propagates, the network affect is activated. As passport holders in potentially multiple co-ops, early adopters become highly valuable to new co-ops who need to build brand awareness.

So why not a system whereby new co-ops pay an attention dividend to coopcreds? Could be minimally invasive – imagine a welcome screen as the passport app loads… “today’s passport sponsor is ___” where those new co-ops pay 10, 20, 30 cents for impressions and/or click-thrus. Could even be that someone who is member of multiple co-ops has a higher value, therefore the sponsor pays a higher rate for someone in five co-ops versus someone in just one.

Then all that’s needed is a robust, open system whereby co-ops that are institutionally verified are able to verify other new co-ops, thereby decentralizing on-boarding. As founder of Resonate, I can easily imagine us doing that work whenever we wanted to make a new marketing agreement with another co-op. The work of going through verification with them is intrinsic to making the deal, so its just a part of the cost of doing business.

With a system like this you have lots of the costs covered through intrinsic motivation needs (“i.e. we need others to find out about our project”) plus it also flattens the propagation process itself, ensuring that the early adopters do the on-boarding for the next wave, rather than creating some massive centralized bureaucracy.

Hope this makes sense… just had the idea minutes ago, so might be some holes in the plan.

[angus]

Interesting!

One thing I’d note here is that we’re not developing an app in the MVP. We’re developing a credential, which can be stored in any VC-compatible wallet. We could develop our own wallet app in the future, but part of the point of the credential will be that it’ll work with whatever wallet solution the user wants to use.

We could still use this promotion / advertising approach via:

• the issuer/verifier, i.e. the place where the person would have first obtained their credential; and / or
• other participants in th scheme (i.e. each participant gets a turn at being promoted by the other participants)

Indeed, cross-selling is one of the main focuses here.

[peter]

Ahh, your response brings up an interesting question. How are issuers “authorized”? What would stop someone from creating a fake co-op in order to issue fake passports?

Or is there a plan to do KYC on the KYC providers?

[angus]

Under the currently proposed model there would be only one issuer and verifier, the industry body:

Industry Body Convenor Model

The current (but not the only possible) ecosystem model for Co-op Creds is what we’re calling the Industry Body Convenor Model (IBCM). [industry-body] The IBCM involves the establishment of a co-operative industry body as both the issuer and verifier of the Co-operative Credential, supported by a technology provider such as coopcreds.com. The maintenance costs of the co-operative credential would be distributed between the co-operatives participating in the system, contributed in the form of m…

The co-ops involved only need to “verify” a presentation of a credential issued by the industry body. The industry body may hold the data needed to verify in a data trust:

Data trusts and co-operative credentials

Some initial thoughts on whether data trusts and co-operative credentials are complimentary. Data Trust A data trust is simply legal structure and a database. The legal structure of the data trust is the key bit. A “trust” is a concept from common law jurisdictions (primarily the U.K. and its former colonies). It involves a relationship between a “Trustee”, in this case the entity holding the data, and the “Beneficiaries”, the entities who have a beneficial interest in the data (e.g. the data …