[tor-dev] Proposal for improving social incentives for relay operators

[Virgil Griffith]

David,

Respectfully, financial incentivization is a much more nuanced issue than
"TorCoin is bad".

TorCoin paper:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7r4osQgWVqKTHdxTlowUVpsVmJRcjF3Y3dtcTVscFhEaW5F

There are two issues to consider, in order.

(1) we wish to engender the creation of additional Tor relays.  This is
equivalent to the established "volunteer labor" problems studied in social
science.  See my previous post for links to journal articles on what kinds
of incentivization work best in each context

(2) Given (1), financial incentivization is an established technique for
encouraging volunteer labor, e.g. http://pareto.uab.es/~prey/gneezy_254.pdf

It's not about "TorCoin", it's about "we want more relays and are
examining quantitative social science (particular, blood donations) to
provide ideas."

-V

On Wednesday, June 11, 2014, David Stainton <dstainton415 at gmail.com> wrote:

> The "torcoin" idea is SUSPICIOUS (and makes me think of a thousand
> conspiracy theories).
> What is "torcoin"? How can I most effectively and systematically
> completely destroy this idea?
> The good news is that we don't need it, it's not endorsed by the Tor
> Project... and it'll never work.
> The non-financial-incentivizing ideas in your post sound OK... perhaps
> a bit unnecessary.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> David
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 12:26 AM, Virgil Griffith <i at virgil.gr
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > For a while I've been seeking to grow the Tor network in both size and
> > goodput.  Towards this end, I've explored various avenues such as
> increasing
> > user-awareness via tor2web.  More recently, I've been exploring financial
> > incentives like TorCoin.
> >
> > Not wanting to strictly limit ourselves to financial incentives, I began
> > reading the literature on incentivizing volunteers.  The most relevant
> > papers I found are:
> >
> > *
> http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/LMS2_ManSci-Paper-Final.pdf
> > * http://pareto.uab.es/~prey/gneezy_254.pdf
> > * https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3308162/Slonim%202013.pdf
> >
> > The most relevant of these papers (Lacetera 2013) cites the major
> > motivations for volunteer labor are: "pure altruism, warm glow,
> self-image,
> > and reputation".  Upon reading this I realized TorCoin's technical
> > interestingness had blinded me to much easier to leverage motivations of
> > "warm glow" and "reputation".
> >
> > I propose the following system for harnessing "warm glow" and
> "reputation"
> > for Tor relay operators.  I am willing to fund this in its entirety.
> >
> > I propose establishing a subdomain on torproject.org giving each Tor
> relay
> > operator (hereafter affectionately called "Torati") his/her own page
> using
> > the information her machines provide to the Tor Directory Consensus.  The
> > fields to show on her "Torati profile page" would be things like:
> > ContactInfo, PGP fingerprint, list of server nicknames, date the
> Directory
> > Authorities first saw her contact info, etc.  You can also imagine a
> > receiving special "special recognition stars" for operating an exit or
> > bridge node.  Moreover, some bandwidth measurement like EigenSpeed or
> > TorCoin gain traction, the Torati page could recognize contributors with
> by
> > listing the sum total she has relayed to the Tor network.
> >
> > Naturally a node can opt-out of Torati recognition by setting a
> parameter in
> > the torrc file.
> >
> > I argue this would be a cheap and easy way to motivate operators to
> > volunteer more bandwidth for the Tor network.  As mentioned before, I am
> > willing to fund this in its entirety.
> >
> > -Virgil
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > tor-dev at lists.torproject.org <javascript:;>
> > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
> >
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