The SIFT Protocol:

A community-driven network to source information from the crowd and qualify it through blockchain-powered user-consensus.

Today, narratives are often created and controlled by central authorities behind closed doors. We want to change this by empowering and giving control back to consumers of that information. To achieve this we are developing the SIFT Protocol.

The SIFT Protocol is a community-driven network that allows participants to source information from the crowd and qualify it through blockchain-powered user-consensus. It is a decentralised and self-governing system that is resistant to censorship and abuse by powerful entities.

We are building the SIFT Protocol as a stand-alone, decentralized tool.

Media Sifter will be the first application for the protocol, but we want the community to embrace the tool and develop further applications for it.

To better understand the protocol, I have outlined below an elementary overview of how it works. We will first describe how it will work as a stand-alone platform and then show its application within Media Sifter in the last part of this post.

It is important to consider that the SIFT Protocol comes into place after the creation or aggregation of the original content.

1) Request for information

When a user wants to investigate a topic or a particular piece of content, they will be able to specify the information required in a pre-defined format, categorize it and assign a reward to their request. Once finalised, the request is published on a public ledger and the system notifies individuals likely to be able to respond to it.

Other users can contribute by adding to the pledge before the request is resolved. The higher the pledge, the higher the incentive for individuals to respond.

2) Delivery of information

Once the initial stake has been confirmed, community members who can answer this request will start sourcing the required information and present it according to guidelines and a pre-defined form. In this case, these users act as investigators.

Relevance and verifiability are the two decision criteria within the Media Sifter guidelines and it is the investigator’s responsibility to convince the reviewer (see next section) of both. Following these guidelines increases the objectivity of the evidence, which is imperative to the review process.

Once presented in this defined format and staked with a fixed amount of SFT Tokens to pay the reviewers, the information enters the independent review process.

3) Qualification of information

As the SIFT Protocol is fully decentralized, it operates under a set of incentives that reward or punish an individual’s contribution accordingly.

Now that the investigators have presented their information, another group of users are asked to analyse the evidence. These users are now taking the role of reviewers.

The protocol will select an uneven amount of reviewers anonymously and, to prevent collusion, show these only a very limited amount of information prior to accepting the review.

After being selected, accepting and staking a fixed amount of SFT Tokens, each reviewer is presented with the information and votes yes/no on verifiability and relevance. A combination of the reputation involved, paired with reviewer-consensus, decides on whether the information delivery was successful, leading to a payout to the investigator, and a score to it that affects its presentability in the application.