Hey guys :) I’m back with another comprehensive Q&A piece, this time for the decentralized blockchain dispute resolution platform – Kleros (PNK).
Kleros is a decentralized blockchain dispute resolution platform that provides fast, secure, and affordable arbitration in essentially any scenario. It’s one of the most interesting and promising projects built on Ethereum today and is critical to ushering in a decentralized world.
Now, before we dive in, the following piece is similar to my latest articles on Fantom (FTM), Orchid (OXT), and Polkadot (DOT), so if you haven’t already seen those, be sure to check them out as well.
Hope you enjoy!
The list of Q&A is kind of long so first comes the list of questions that I have prepared the answers to:
- What is Kleros?
- Who and When Created Kleros?
- What is the Purpose of $PNK Token?
- How does the Justice Protocol work?
- Why and How a Group of People on the Internet Can Agree on Something?
- How Kleros Picks Jurors for the Case?
- How Does One Become a Juror?
- How Much Can You Earn as Juror?
- Where to Store $PNK?
- Where to Buy & Sell $PNK?
1. What is Kleros?
Kleros website homepage
Kleros is a fully decentralized blockchain dispute resolution protocol that offers a trust backed escrow system to weed out bad actors and scammers from legitimate offerings.
Kleros can be used to solve disputes which otherwise can’t be affordably solved by courts or other dispute resolution methods. It offers businesses and individuals a truly decentralized and unbiased dispute resolution process that uses cryptoeconomics to incentivize users to become jurors and vote honestly on disputes.
The Kleros dispute resolution protocol can be integrated into any platform or decentralized application (dapp) to solve a variety of disputes, that in many cases, cannot be solved by courts or traditional arbitration systems.
Kleros Products & Integrations
With Kleros, disputes can be solved in a fast, affordable, and secure way. Some example use cases for the Kleros dispute resolution protocol include:
- Small Claims
- Insurance
- E-commerce
- Finance
- Freelance
- Token Listing
- Content Moderation
- Intellectual Property
- + Much More
Kleros Features
Peer-to-Peer - A global community of users can serve as jurors.
Cryptoeconomics - Blockchain and game theory bring fast, affordable, and fair decisions.
Multi-Purpose - Kleros works in a wide variety of industries.
Open-Source - Kleros’ research and code development are open-source and free for anyone to use.
2. Who and When Created Kleros?
Kleros team (Source)
Kleros was founded in 2017 by Federico Ast and Clement Lesaege who’ve become industry leaders on the concept of decentralized justice.
The idea for Kleros first came to Federico when he saw lots of corruption in Argentina’s court system. He then conducted research on the matter and realized that corruption and the problem of justice inclusion are not limited to Argentina, it’s global.
Eventually, Federico was introduced to Kleros’ soon to be co-founder Clement when he presented a project about decentralized courts at a hackathon. Clement comes from a background in computer science and machine learning and had a pretty good understanding of how the incentives behind decentralized justice had to work.
After the hackathon, Federico and Clement got together and started working on Kleros around May 2017.
Getting back to Kleros’ founders:
Kleros founder, Federico Ast
Federico Ast serves as Kleros’ CEO and is a highly educated individual who’s obtained a BA in Philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and a Ph.D. in Management from IAE Business School. In addition to working on Kleros, Fedrico hosts a blockchain Coursera course in Spanish and is also a creator and evangelist ar Crowdjury.
Prior to Kleros and these other current positions, Federico served as a lecturer and researcher at the Universidad de Buenos Aires; as a journalist, speaker, and blogger for Clarin; as an Interim CEO at Houseboard, among other publishing and media positions.
Kleros founder, Clement Lesaege
Clement Lesaege serves as Kleros’ CTO and holds an MA in Computer Science and Machine Learning. Prior to Kleros, he worked as a Smart Contract Security Freelancer and served various internship positions for Research and Machine Learning.
Apart from Kleros’ founders, the project is made up of a cross-disciplinary and international team that’s passionate about blockchain and its potential to transform law and governance.
3. What is the Purpose of $PNK Token?
Kleros (PNK) token logo
The native cryptocurrency of the Kleros protocol is the Pinakion, $PNK token.
The word “Pinakion” comes from ancient Greece, where a Pinakion was the ID token used by the Ancient Athenians to be drawn as jurors in a popular trial.
A pinakion. The ID token used by the Ancient Athenians to be drawn as jurors in a popular trial. (Source)
Kleros’ $PNK token is utilized within the Kleros dispute resolution protocol. PNK use cases include:
- Juror Incentives
- Attack Protection
- Platform Governance
Juror Incentives
Users need to stake their PNK in order to be drawn as jurors in disputes, (users only stake PNK if they’re available to serve as jurors). When selecting a juror for a case (a dispute), random PNK is drawn from among those who staked, and the people who hold these PNK are the jurors.
Jurors who vote with the majority are awarded a portion of the arbitration fees in ETH, as well as a portion of staked PNK if there are jurors who voted with the minority. That said, jurors are incentivized, to be honest, and take cases seriously because they get awarded for voting with the majority and penalized for voting with the minority.
Attack Protection
The PNK token protects against malicious actors, specifically Sybil attacks, otherwise known as 51% attacks. Using PNK instead of ETH protects the system against these types of attacks because it’s much harder to execute a 51% attack on Kleros with PNK than it would be with ETH.
Platform Governance
The PNK token is used for voting in platform governance. PNK token holders can use it to vote on Kleros protocol updates, fixes, and proposals themselves, or they can choose to delegate their PNK voting power to another party.
PNK Token Distribution
The total supply of Pinakion is fixed at 1,000,000,000 PNK and as of October 2020, the circulating supply is 552,452,263 PNK.
PNK Token Allocation:
- 18% - Team Members
- 16% - First Round of Token Sale
- 4% - Airdrop
- 50% - Subsequent Rounds and Juror Incentive Program
- 12% - Kleros Cooperative Development Reserve
4. How does the Justice Protocol work?
Kleros explainer video
Kleros is a decentralized blockchain dispute resolution protocol that offers businesses and individuals a truly decentralized and unbiased dispute resolution process.
The way it works is:
Let’s say two or more participants use a Kleros integrated dapp to transact in the blockchain ecosystem for services, products, or assets. The participants would enter into an agreement and transact with one another using Ether (ETH).
With the Kleros protocol, the transacted Ether is put in escrow and released once certain conditions are met, like an escrow service. However, if a dispute happens, it will be adjudicated by crowdsourced jurors selected and incentivized by the Kleros Justice protocol.
These crowd-sourced jurors will review all of the attached evidence and then cast their vote as to who should win the dispute. The jurors have an incentive to vote honestly by being awarded the platform’s native cryptocurrency, the Pinakion Token (PNK), and ETH. Jurors trying to game the system will lose money.
By using crowdsourced jurors instead of a centralized entity to solve disputes, both parties benefit from a global pool of jurors that are incentivized by the Kleros protocol to conduct honest rulings.
5. Why and How a Group of People on the Internet Can Agree on Something?
The team behind Kleros believes that anonymous people on the internet who don’t trust each other can still reach consensus and make the right decisions, provided incentives are correctly structured.
That’s what Kleros does. It employs the right set of incentives in its arbitration process to enable complete strangers to reach consensus on the right decisions.
The Incentives Kleros uses are based on a game-theoretical concept known as Schelling Point, developed by Thomas Schelling, Nobel Prize in Economics 2005.
The basic concept is:
The anonymous crowdsourced jurors who vote coherently with the majority should be rewarded and the jurors voting incoherently (the minority) should be punished. Users doing high quality and honest work will make money. Users doing poor quality or dishonest work will lose money.
All in all, Kleros’ decentralized arbitration protocol uses game theory, transparent blockchain technology, crowdsourcing, and innovative tokenomics with staking rewards and consequences to adjudicate claims in a fast, transparent, and inexpensive way.
And it can enforce the decisions made because Kleros is a voluntary opt-in system, which means that parties have to accept whatever outcome Kleros provides beforehand.
6. How Kleros Picks Jurors for the Case?
The Kleros protocol token (Pinakion, PNK) represents the right of users to be drawn randomly as jurors. Potential Kleros jurors stake their PNK tokens if they’re available to serve as jurors.
When selecting a juror for a case (a dispute), random PNK is drawn from among those who staked, and the people who hold the selected PNK are the jurors.
As for the number of jurors selected, this is decided by the parties involved. They may decide to have one, three, five, or any number of jurors.
Additionally, jurors choose on what topics they have expertise in. Therefore Kleros algorithm can make better choices when picking jurors for a specific case.
7. How Does One Become a Juror?
You must apply to become a juror on the Kleros platform and then stake the protocol’s native Pinakion $PNK token. Kleros crowdsources a number of jurors from around the world and randomly assigns them to certain cases.
However, although Kleros choose jurors at random, it picks jurors from their specific field of expertise. Currently, you can become a juror in the following courts:
- General Court
- Blockchain
- Marketing Services
- English Language
- Video Production
- Onboarding
- Curation
- Data Analysis
PNK staking requirements vary between courts, but the General Court requires a minimum stake of 500 PNK, and to cast a vote, you must stake 250 PNK.
Moreover, it should be noted that Jurors do not know who one another are and therefore cannot communicate and collude in their decision making.
8. How Much Can You Earn as a Juror?
Kleros Court dashboard (Source)
Each Kleros case is different, and the amount of money a juror makes is dependent on the type of court, the number of jurors involved, and the complexity of the case.
For example, in the courts below, Jurors will receive the following for each coherent vote:
- General Court - 0.082 ETH +
- Blockchain - 0.098 ETH +
- Marketing Services - 0.1 ETH +
- English Language - 0.1 ETH +
- Video Production - 0.1 ETH +
- Onboarding - 0.03 ETH +
- Cuaration - 0.047 ETH +
- Data Analysis - 0.1 ETH +
Also, in the event that some jurors voted with the minority, and you voted with the majority, you’ll receive a portion of their staked PNK in addition to the ETH reward listed above.
9. Where to Store $PNK?
Kleros (PNK) is an ERC-20 token residing on top of the public Ethereum blockchain. That said, you can store PNK in any ERC-20 token supported wallet.
However, the best wallets for storing PNK are non-custodial Web3 wallets that provide seamless access to the best Ethereum dapps, like Kleros. That said, DeFi wallets are often the best for storing PNK.
Popular Kleros (PNK) Wallets:
- Trust Wallet (mobile)
- Argent (mobile)
- Coinbase Wallet (mobile)
- Ledger Nano S (hardware)
- Metamask (web)
In addition to the above-listed wallets, Kleros (PNK) can be stored on a wide variety of other reputable wallets supporting ERC-20 tokens.
10. Where to Buy & Sell $PNK?
Kleros(PNK) can be bought and sold on a peer-to-peer (P2P) basis but the most popular way to buy, sell, or trade PNK is through centralized or decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
You can buy PNK with cryptocurrency or fiat currency at the following top exchanges. In most cases, you will be able to buy PNK with ETH or stablecoins.
- Uniswap - WETH, ETH
- OKEx - USDT, ETH
- Bitfinex - ETH, USD
- Balancer - WETH, DXD, BZRX
- DeversiFi - ETH, USDT
In addition to the exchanges listed above, Kleros (PNK) is also traded on a wide variety of other exchanges and platforms that enable people to buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrencies.
Hope you enjoyed that read :) Let me know if I have missed something in the comments.
