A Founder’s Prayer for his Protocol

Here at nCent Labs, we believe markets are a more efficient way to organize work at scale than firms. (For an introduction to how incentive markets can be formulated on a blockchain, see our recent post entitled The Success of Incentive-Centered Markets.) There are three meta-categories of incentive programs...

10 Lessons I Learned from 10 Red Balloons

How do you find the best person for a job in the fastest way possible? The answer to this question is something of a holy grail for startups. A recent study has shown, for example, that companies with effective recruitment strategies double the profit margins of their competition.

Incentive Markets Will Replace These Three Business Categories

Space exploration plays a special role in our hearts and minds. Humanity is set upon a great timeline of exploration, and space primordially calls to us next. Our first steps on the moon, for example, symbolize the cumulative technological achievement of humanity. Ever since then, children dream of jettisoning...

The New Space Race: Designing Incentives to Move Us Forward

Decentralized incentive markets can solve complex problems at scale, but to realize this potential we must optimize two equally important domains:

(1) the technology side, by building the best protocol and tools for developers, users and others to create and participate in an incentive market;

(2) the psychology side, by understanding how to effectively...

Heal the World by Incentivizing Donations

What’s one of the biggest challenges facing nonprofits, social activists, and political campaigns? The answer is simple: finding donations. Since charitable work addresses some of the most important social, political, and ecological crises facing our society, we need to ensure that they can effectively raise the funds they need. But as things stand, the most common...

A Truly “Fireside” Chat with Steve Jurvetson

We at nCent believe that designing the right incentive system is crucial for optimal system operation, and that this statement applies to domains far and wide. Today we’ll focus on a system that countless commentators have called a “broken system”—namely American politics.

The Psychology of Incentives on Blockchains

Decentralized networks like blockchains have the potential to solve complex problems by incentivizing individuals to contribute their specialized knowledge and skills to achieve a common goal.

How nCent Compares With Other Blockchains

One of the most important decisions we’ve made at nCent Labs is to create our own base layer protocol, rather than build on an existing “Turing Complete” chain like Ethereum, EOS, or NEO. The fact that Ethereum was released only three years ago—considered alongside of recent developments in sidechains, sharding, and alternative consensus mechanisms—made it significantly more challenging for us to trust the long-term predictability...

Get Paid for the Value You Provide to a Social Network

Social media networks and applications like Facebook and Twitter have become a primary means by which many people exchange information on a day-to-day basis. This exchange is made public more often than not; a musician might publicize, for example, that she’s performing at a local hotspot for her family and friends, who could then share the announcement with a broader circle of contacts in turn...

The Success of Incentive-Centered Blockchain Markets

In ordinary contexts, the term ‘incentive’ refers to an individual’s reason for acting towards a particular goal. Within the blockchain community, the concept of an incentive is becoming increasingly popular, although here it takes on a more technical meaning. We say, for instance, that an incentive-centered design is one that aligns the incentives of an individual with the overarching goal(s) of a system...

Why Not Ethereum for Everything?

In recent years, we have seen an explosion in the number of cryptocurrencies. Ethereum is an adaptable blockchain on which Turing-complete “smart contracts” can be programmed to implement a mind-boggling assortment of applications. The ability of Ethereum to effectively emulate other cryptocurrency schemes raises the question...

nCent Presents: Summer of Incentive Hacking Reading List

We at nCent Labs think a great deal about incentives, incentive design, and incentive markets. We invite you to share some of our mindshare—and join our summer incentive hacking reading list...

Doing God's Work

This tweet was a bit tongue in cheek. The CEO of Goldman Sachs made his (in)famous reference to God’s work—which became a caricature of Wall Street. But when I had the opportunity to reflect on where we are headed at nCent Labs, it really drove home one of our organizing values: cobuilding a movement that values everyone’s unique...

What I Learned from 10K Telegrammers in 10 Days

July 11th, 2018… This date has special meaning for me and many in our community. Ten short days ago, we embarked on a blockchain protocol right of passage: we downloaded telegram and created our group, nCent Nation. Today, we crossed 10,000 users...