Recently Flat Out Crypto published a piece " Token Curated Registries probably aren’t going to change the world" It is very well written and full of valid critiques, I encourage you all to read it.

Hacker Noon – 11 Feb 19 Token Curated Registries probably aren’t going to change the world Token Curated Registries (TCRs) are a curious concept. At their heart they are a means of creating a list, a rather prosaic sounding goal… Reading time: 16 min read

Interestingly, the article states: “there are some interesting use cases of TCRs. One such example comes from FOAM Space, which is a good representation of how seemingly banal lists can be used to generate something far greater.”

The article also brings up a number of potential negatives to FOAM compared to a centralized system. I will address some of those points below:

Potential negatives of FOAM compared to centralized entity

Burden shifts from centrazlized company with superior technology incentivized by market to produce “best” list for consumers, to limited number of engaged individuals with disparate reasons for engagement

It is important to note that outside of companies like Google, any centralized companies are in fact building off of the work done by open source geo-data from OpenStreetMap contributed by Cartographers globally. While centralized companies have superior technology incentivized by the market the analyze and check this data, before turning around and selling it, there have been a number of flaws with this system. See for example:

BBC News New York renamed 'Jewtropolis' in map hack Snapchat's mapping software appears to have been hacked in what it calls an act of vandalism.

TechCrunch Grab is messing up the world’s largest mapping community’s data in Southeast... Grab, Southeast Asia’s top ride-hailing company, has hit a roadblock in its efforts to improve its mapping and routing service after running into trouble with OpenStreetMap, the world’s largest collaborative mapping community, through a series of...

The thinking is that shifting to an open verification system with incentives will produce better results over time, even if starting with a “limited number of engaged individuals with disparate reasons for engagement”

The only way to truly verify the specific information is by visiting the Point of Interest in person. This is time consuming and impractical for much of world. Less population dense areas will have less curators…

It is not impractical when you frame it in terms of ground truth and local knowledge. As a curator examining a the Map in an area you have intimate knowledge in you should be able to recognize points and easily spot false points. It is also possible to verify a business or location through documentation about the place on the internet, whether it be a website or a government document. While it may be the case that less population dense areas will have less curators this can be addressed through location specific bounties. Also to note, the registry it to ultimately be used by smart contract applications. If those applications are operating in areas with sparse population they can also drive demand for geo data in that region.

Much like electoral models give some voters in swing districts a vote of greater importance than other voters likewise this models means that some curators will have greater impact/importance than others.

In this version of the PLCR voting schema it is possible for a voter with more tokens to have more sway. This can be addressed by introducing a slashing condition for ending up on the wrong side of the vote as well as the upcoming leaderboard where reputation can be assessed of addresses by looking at total balance and map activity.

Incomplete/worse information (Google Maps have been building their data for years and have substantial technological advantages)

Even if centralized sources currently have “better” information, smart contracts still have to face the obstacle of on chain oracles and a means to reliably pull on and reference data from Google, with an associated fee. Further, I find issue on Google Maps daily. With a new crowd sourced incentive for verification the goal is to build up a consensus driven map that smart contracts can easily hook into.

Attack vector shifts from one entity (which has overall sight of all inputs as well as the recourse to undo any error unilaterally and easily) to a system which has to protect against multiple actors with incentives to game it.

See the points above. There are attacks from many vectors companies need to address in the current geospatial data set up. Further, anyone looking to attack or game the Map needs to put tokens at stake and there is a pending period where curators can inspect these points. To date, points that are challenged mostly occur within the first week of their existence.

Just because something could be valuable does not mean it has value. The FOAM Token has to be valuable for the system to work. Google Maps is valuable, but even if it wasn’t, the attack vendors wouldn’t change overnight.

Yes the token needs to have value for the system to work. Currently there is a fair market value for the token and you can qualitatively assess how much value is locked in the map backing the veracity of the information. This mechanism captures tokens and value to back the registry as it grows in information.

For the FOAM Tokens to be valuable, people have to use the FOAM Space. For people to use FOAM Space, there needs to be the incentive (ie higher token price) Just getting FOAM off the ground is a difficulty.

Definitely a difficult task to achieve. You can see the current FOAM Map stats here to see how the first months are developing:

The more items on a TCR, the harder it is to govern efficiently without an equal rise in active curators. Scaling becomes difficult while maintaining quality - Spam attacks to hide desired submissions are a real possibility.

As mentioned, to date faulty points are being found quite quickly. Even if spam attack points are well hidden, there is always a latent bounty a curator can win when the point is found. As the number of points grow, the possibility for finding faulty points also will rise. We will be tracking how the rise in curators corresponds to this.

Curators are incentivized to vote as they think the crowd will. (Because you will receive rewards for being “right”) above all else

With the PLCR voting schema you can not see how other participants are voting, so it is quite difficult to follow the crowd.

Transparent decision making process - but without a twinned reputation system, very easy for system to be taken advantage by large holders.

The upcoming leaderboard will be the first means of addressing reputation so you can track how an address acts over time and their stake in the protocol. Here is an early alpha version, without stylistic design: