Long before the hype around TCRs started, at Way we have been applying the idea of token curated attention networks to the context of social discovery: We developed a mechanism that helps filter and connect individuals who do not know each other but stand to benefit from interaction. Token Curated Communities, as we call them, allow strangers to have trustful and valuable real-world encounters. In this post I want to explain the potential that lies in this use case and outline how Way is planning to realize it.

The information asymmetries of everyday urban life

The point of curation is to reduce information asymmetries: A group of people wants to know something, that is not obvious: Which data provider has the best sensors, who is the most trustworthy doctor in my area, which websites are legit partners for advertisement? — whenever we make a business transaction, we want to find reliable answers to such questions and pick the best service provider for our current need.

But there are also more subtle, non-monetary transactions where information asymmetries hinder trade. When we are walking around in our cities we are surrounded by strangers. We are social animals and enjoy connecting with people beyond our immediate family but it is hard to determine whom we should bring into our lives, allocate our limited attention to and befriend. If you approach strangers randomly and start talking to them they will tend not to trust you, because they have no information whatsoever on who you are and what your intentions might be. Therefore we usually do not communicate at all with individuals whom we do not know.

Existing solutions

Of course, human society has come up with solutions for this problem. But they are clearly imperfect:

Place and interest based communities

People go to certain physical places in order to filter trustworthy, compatible strangers and connect with them: the college campus, the music club (here the filtering is done by the bouncer), conferences, cafes and activity groups all allow us to overcome the fundamental information asymmetry described above. When you happen to physically go to the same place and engage in similar activities you can get to know the other people who go there. But this severely restricts the pool of potential connections: you will only be able to get to know the people who happen to go to the same institution at the same time as you. For many, that is not enough.

Social Media

Then of course — at least for those who are happy to share a constructed identity online — there is social media. Facebook and Instagram allow people to gather information about the personality of newly met strangers and filter those new connections. But this form of scrutiny can only happen after the first contact has already been made, so it does not really help with building trust for the very first interaction.

Social Discovery Apps

To meet new people over the internet, you have to turn to social discovery apps for dating and networking. Tinder, shapr and Couchsurfing are prominent examples but there are hundreds in each category. However, because of the way the internet works today, each of these apps keeps their user data locked up in silos. It is likely that, when you are out and about in your city, there is another person very nearby who is on one of those social discovery apps and interested in meeting new people when filtered properly. But it is unlikely that you will be registered on the very same app and checking it at the right moment. Moreover, these technologies hardly solve the trust problem. Just because someone seems to be a nice person from their profile and a chat conversation does not mean that they are actually nice or a person at all. These apps only work for very specific communities (the singles, the travelers, the business developers etc.) who have a strong need for connection within their community and are willing to go through the painful and risky process of planning a meeting with an unvetted stranger.

The centralized business model of the Web 2.0 does not allow for the kind of scale that would be required to connect strangers more broadly. We love to meet new people through our hobbies and interests, even when such network extension is not the primary purpose of our membership: When you find yourself with a bunch of strangers in a subway compartment there might not be someone you would be interested to date, but maybe there is someone who is into fitness, too, and would be happy to discuss their workout plan. These are perhaps rather low-value, but also rather low-cost encounters. And every day billions of such interactions are not realized.

A new market

Now the technology is ready for this unserved market. Way is creating it.

Our solution

We are building a data ecosystem where every user can signal her physical presence and community affiliations in order to facilitate real-world interactions with others. At first this will look like a mobile app. Some day, inshallah, it will be a digital infrastructure covering public space worldwide.