Next in our series of permaweb partnerships, we’re delighted to announce that we’ve teamed up with wiki-based encyclopedia Everipedia — a project involving founders from Wikipedia and Genius.com. We’ll be storing the wealth of knowledge that Everipedia preserves on the Arweave, and together, we strive to forever preserve human history on the permaweb.

What is Everipedia?

Everipedia is the largest online English encyclopedia, modernised and re-designed for the digital age; it is similar to Wikipedia except all information is stored and incentivised on a blockchain (as opposed to the hierarchal model that Wikipedia has where users have certain privileges over others). The Everipedia editing interface makes creating and editing wiki’s as easy as using Facebook, and enables users to publish pages containing links, pictures, and videos. Like Wikipedia, Everipedia heavily relies on contributors from all over the world.

The decentralised nature of Everipedia means that users in Turkey, Iran, or China are, for the first time, able to access a plethora of knowledge that has previously been denied; Everipedia has Wikipedia imported and therefore it encompasses all of Wikipedia’s English language content, and much more. Just like Arweave, Everipedia is serverless and there are no gatekeepers controlling the narrative of human knowledge — anybody can make a page, as long as it’s well cited.

Enabling the knowledge economy

Community members are held accountable for submissions to Everipedia but unlike Wikipedia — where thousands of editors labour for free — Everipedia’s editors get an incentive from the points system, whereby creating articles and approved edits amasses “IQ.” Using EOS blockchain technology, Everipedia converts IQ scores to a token-based currency, giving all existing editors an allotment proportionate to their IQ — and giving them a real, financial stake in the platform.

To prevent bad actors from trying to cash in with ill-founded or deliberately false articles and edits, Everipedia require users to put up a token of their own in order to submit. If their work is accepted, they get their tokens back, plus a little bit extra for their contributions; if not, their tokens get slashed, which essentially means it takes longer for the tokens to be returned to their account to reuse. All holders of IQ are incentivised to create quality, neutral content and to work together in building the reputation of the network.

The model aims to make feasible a fully-autonomous encyclopedia that does not need to rely on advertisements or donations.

Current state

Already, we’re storing the articles that account for 80% of the Everipedia traffic on the permaweb and as the wealth of knowledge on the platform grows, we look forward to being part of the mission to preserve human history for future generations.

Want to help guarantee the safety of humanity’s knowledge and earn tokens at the same time? Why not try running an Arweave node!