Summary
Owner-written annotations are an excellent way to communicate what a HASH TX represents, including its historical significance.
But incorrect or misleading annotations could induce unsophisticated HASH buyers to trust the claim without verifying it and overpay based on the falsehood. This would hurt the project's reputation, especially because user annotations show up as HASH titles and descriptions on OpenSea and may be mistaken for claims made by the project itself.
What is proposed is a minimally-functional, opt-in verification system with loud signaling as to unverified claims to protect buyers and the project's reputation. It would allow owners to request claim verification, appoint a group of identified individuals to act as historians to research and verify the claims, and add a "Verified" property to the claim's metadata.
Motivation
The HASH project is a wonderful way to curate and tell the story of Ethereum using generative art visuals minted from unique transaction hashes. Adding explanatory titles and descriptive annotations can massively increase the viewer's comprehension of the significance of the TX underlying the art, plus it allows owners to add their personal voice to the context surrounding these unique pieces.
Currently nothing prevents owners from making whatever representations they wish about their HASHes. Misleading or inaccurate titles and descriptions look just the same as accurate ones, and it is left to the viewer to independently verify whether the claim is true. This undercuts the value of the annotations.
Buyers could be misled into overpaying for a HASH by the belief that it is more historically significant or rare than it is. Any owner - either through innocent mistake or willful deceit - may claim that a HASH is the first TX ever made on Ethereum, but that is only true of one HASH.
We have already seen instances of misleading or inaccurate or misleading historical claims in HASH annotations, prompting the need for this HCIP. See https://discord.com/channels/797978413691305995/813437883238973520/814506298246561812 and https://discord.com/channels/797978413691305995/813437883238973520/815264847171289109
It's also important to recognize that many fans of POB HASHes may not be familiar with reading and understanding TX hash data as it's displayed on explorers like Etherscan, and so are incapable of verifying whether a claim is true. More probable is that HASH viewers will either tend to believe all annotations are probably true and risk getting fleeced, or to assume they are all most likely inaccurate and disregard the project in general. Neither is good for the viability of the project.
In order to protect buyers and the reputation of the project as a serious historical indexing endeavor, we should create a minimally viable claim verification system.
We don't want to sacrifice decentralization and permissionlessness by inserting a centralized gatekeeper who is tasked with approving every submitted annotation. A lightweight verification system might have the following components:
- a default metadata setting that the annotation is unverified
- high visibility into whether a claim is verified, including on secondary market platforms
- a one-click option to submit a historical claim for verification when submitting annotations
- a panel of identified HASH historians with the on-chain research skills and willingness to verify submitted claims
- a function allowing the panel to set specific HASH annotations to "verified" in the metadata
It is proposed to create the first iteration of the historians panel by seeking volunteers to serve on a 3 of 5 multisig. The panel would also be responsible for publishing guidelines for annotations containing historical claims so that owners seeking verification can know how to frame their claims.
Rationale
Eventually a historians DAO may be the best long term solution for this challenge.
But given the early experimental stage of the HASH project, it makes more sense to get a minimally viable cohort working on this issue before the problem grows unwieldy and causes harm. It is expected that a fair amount will be learned about how best to accomplish this task in the doing of it, knowledge which will benefit the proper construction of a future DAO.
A small, nimble team working transparently should be able to bring efficient results and help lay the foundation for the work of the permanent body.
Implementation
There are three pieces to implementing this proposal:
- Recruit and approve the initial historians panel and set the scope of their work
- Modify the smart contracts to include "verified" metadata and permitting the panel to make those determinations - a function allowing multiple HASHes to be set to verified in a single TX is preferred
- Update the UI to display the verification status and allow owners to request that their claims be submitted for verification
Designated team
Open and up for grabs. Anyone interested in serving on the historians panel should indicate their interest by responding to this issue below, including the following information:
Name:
Discord handle:
Background in the space:
On-chain research competency:
Sponsor
None at the moment
Notes
Here's an in-progress spreadsheet detailing and describing the hacks and exploits represented by some of the minted HASHes - it's semi-related to the type of work the panel historians would be doing: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j9nXjENVsHEaHCBzZ1bNsMZ7-7WSoYkkvU-adr5h5Ks/edit#gid=2111404613
Summary
Owner-written annotations are an excellent way to communicate what a HASH TX represents, including its historical significance.
But incorrect or misleading annotations could induce unsophisticated HASH buyers to trust the claim without verifying it and overpay based on the falsehood. This would hurt the project's reputation, especially because user annotations show up as HASH titles and descriptions on OpenSea and may be mistaken for claims made by the project itself.
What is proposed is a minimally-functional, opt-in verification system with loud signaling as to unverified claims to protect buyers and the project's reputation. It would allow owners to request claim verification, appoint a group of identified individuals to act as historians to research and verify the claims, and add a "Verified" property to the claim's metadata.
Motivation
The HASH project is a wonderful way to curate and tell the story of Ethereum using generative art visuals minted from unique transaction hashes. Adding explanatory titles and descriptive annotations can massively increase the viewer's comprehension of the significance of the TX underlying the art, plus it allows owners to add their personal voice to the context surrounding these unique pieces.
Currently nothing prevents owners from making whatever representations they wish about their HASHes. Misleading or inaccurate titles and descriptions look just the same as accurate ones, and it is left to the viewer to independently verify whether the claim is true. This undercuts the value of the annotations.
Buyers could be misled into overpaying for a HASH by the belief that it is more historically significant or rare than it is. Any owner - either through innocent mistake or willful deceit - may claim that a HASH is the first TX ever made on Ethereum, but that is only true of one HASH.
We have already seen instances of misleading or inaccurate or misleading historical claims in HASH annotations, prompting the need for this HCIP. See https://discord.com/channels/797978413691305995/813437883238973520/814506298246561812 and https://discord.com/channels/797978413691305995/813437883238973520/815264847171289109
It's also important to recognize that many fans of POB HASHes may not be familiar with reading and understanding TX hash data as it's displayed on explorers like Etherscan, and so are incapable of verifying whether a claim is true. More probable is that HASH viewers will either tend to believe all annotations are probably true and risk getting fleeced, or to assume they are all most likely inaccurate and disregard the project in general. Neither is good for the viability of the project.
In order to protect buyers and the reputation of the project as a serious historical indexing endeavor, we should create a minimally viable claim verification system.
We don't want to sacrifice decentralization and permissionlessness by inserting a centralized gatekeeper who is tasked with approving every submitted annotation. A lightweight verification system might have the following components:
It is proposed to create the first iteration of the historians panel by seeking volunteers to serve on a 3 of 5 multisig. The panel would also be responsible for publishing guidelines for annotations containing historical claims so that owners seeking verification can know how to frame their claims.
Rationale
Eventually a historians DAO may be the best long term solution for this challenge.
But given the early experimental stage of the HASH project, it makes more sense to get a minimally viable cohort working on this issue before the problem grows unwieldy and causes harm. It is expected that a fair amount will be learned about how best to accomplish this task in the doing of it, knowledge which will benefit the proper construction of a future DAO.
A small, nimble team working transparently should be able to bring efficient results and help lay the foundation for the work of the permanent body.
Implementation
There are three pieces to implementing this proposal:
Designated team
Open and up for grabs. Anyone interested in serving on the historians panel should indicate their interest by responding to this issue below, including the following information:
Name:
Discord handle:
Background in the space:
On-chain research competency:
Sponsor
None at the moment
Notes
Here's an in-progress spreadsheet detailing and describing the hacks and exploits represented by some of the minted HASHes - it's semi-related to the type of work the panel historians would be doing: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j9nXjENVsHEaHCBzZ1bNsMZ7-7WSoYkkvU-adr5h5Ks/edit#gid=2111404613