Kleros AMA Recap
CryptoDiffer team
We are glad to meet here
We are glad to meet here
Stuart James (@Stuart_James), COO at Kleros
Let`s start from the first introduction question:
Q1: Can you introduce yourself to the community? What is your background and how did you join Kleros?
Stuart James
COO
Sure. I’ve been in blockchain for sometime having worked in mining along with earlier marketing jobs with Bitfinex and so. Now, I’ve been with Kleros as COO for around two years.
Before crypto I was in fact a music and video producer in Scotland for around a decade.
If I’m allowed to post extra notes, there’s far more info on that here.
https://medium.com/kleros/meet-the-community-manager-an-interview-with-stuart-james-2b3daef4d7ab
I joined Kleros with an idea to offer greater resolution and access to justice to the masses.
Much like the banking system, the legal institutions haven’t been disrupted for centuries (before Blockchain)
CryptoDiffer team
Q2: Can you briefly describe what is Kleros in 3-5 sentences? What technology stands behind Kleros and why it’s better than the existing one?
Stuart James
COO
Good question.
So Kleros uses blockchain technology joined with game theory and crypto economics to offer a radically new system to solve disputes.
Using incentivized crowdsourced juries, small claims can be settled quicker, cheaper and easier than traditional courts.
I should add, Kleros is not looking to compete with the traditional justice system for heinous crimes like Murder, Robbery, etc.
We found a very strong gap in the market which is the dispute resolution market worth many billions each year and believe we have a better way to resolve small claims than the existing alternatives.
CryptoDiffer team
Q3: What are the major milestones you have achieved so far?
Stuart James
COO
Since our first token sale in June 2018, Kleros has gone on to release 4 dapps on mainnet including a token curated registry that has seen over $400k of deposits made into it.
We have resolved over 150 cases using this ‘crazy’ new method and our jurors have made over $15k in fees for resolving cases.
Recently, we were awarded a grant from the Paris Investment bank to further versions of Kleros.
We are incubated with Thomson Reuters, one of the largest media networks in the world and as far as I know, we are quite liked by Vitalik too. Other than that, in the last week, Kleros has presented at Oxford, Harvard and the Sorbonne in France.
We will present to the EU commission next week for a chance to win another $1m grant. There’s a whole lot of interest from the traditional and academic sector regarding Kleros.
Kleros is still quite under the radar I think but in legaltech circles, we are very well known. Our plan now is to grow our footprint in crypto and beyond.
Cryptodiffer Community
Taking case to court is always a risk because only less than 10 per cent of people who file case in court see their claim go before a judge.
So do you really think people would want to risk living the normal court to file a case in Kleros Court? and what are the benefits of Kleros court over the normal court hearing in terms of Stress,Family tension and Settlement Fee?
Disputes solving may require parties to provide the jurors with some confidential and privileged information which could be accidentally accessed by outside observers in the future. How does Kleros ensures privacy of Contracts?
Stuart James
COO
Great question.
So, Kleros is an ‘Opt-in system’. Both parties have to agree to use Kleros before the contract is setup.
So for example, A French web designer wants to make a website for a Peruvian client. But if this never works out or there is a fault between the parties, it is impossible for either side to reasonably make a claim because of the costs involved.
Using Kleros, both sides can trust each other using our Escrow Dapp + our crowdsourced and incentivized jurors. The winner is automatically paid from the smart contract so enforcement is instant and does not need a third party (Like the police or a court officer)
Cryptodiffer Community
Hey! A few questions.
1. As i got it, anyone interested is able to become a juror in Kleros system and participate in decentralized dispute settlement. Smart contract is just a executive and servicing mechanism in this case but theres also a human factor. A question. How could Kleros avoid subjectiviness, prejudice and conspiracy in voting?
2. Let’s say the vote took place. The jury pronounced in favor of one of the parties. What should force the losing one to comply with the following conditions and adhere to the jury’s decision?
Thanks!
Stuart James
COO
I think my last answer may help you here but both sides have opted into the smart contract, this means enforcement is automatic and non-censorable.
However, if one party feels they have been wrongly judged, they can appeal the decision which in turn, brings in a whole new number of jurors to look at the case. This appeal has been shown to work in our real cases as jurors don’t want to vote for the ‘wrong’ party as they will lose their staked PNK tokens and not receive ETH as a reward.
Cryptodiffer Community
Q1. How optimistic are you of the future use-case of the KLEROS compared to when you started it?
Q2. Could you give us an overview of your tokenomics? Is the token designed to rise and fall with the success of the platform, and does it include any scarcity paths such as stake, store, or burn?
Stuart James
COO
I’d say, I’m far more optimistic about Kleros use cases now than when I started. Not because any of the fundamentals of Kleros have changed, but due to the real and sustained interest we are seeing from Non-crypto companies and governments.
One of our main aims this year is to bridge the gap between the blockchain and the ‘real’ world in order to offer our resolution services to traditional commerce platforms.
Kleros is also a moderation tool, for example, the 200million or so spam comments that Youtube checks a year are mostly solved by an AI. However, around 3-5% of those need human intervention which may be both biased and not accurate. Kleros is also positioned to offer social media moderation in a more fair, efficient and cheaper manner than even in-house teams.
There will be more to follow on that.
Cryptodiffer Community
Mention the reasons why choosing Kleros as an investment? What are the long-term benefits to be gained?
Stuart James
COO
So, I and the team generally don’t speak of investments as it’s just bad practice IMO. Of course, I do believe Kleros will do very well, not just because of our solid platform and idea, but the team I work with are really quite high level. We are lean, productive and have completed our roadmaps from day one on a tiny budget. I think there are not many projects who have accomplished what we have with < $2.5m
Cryptodiffer Community
Can you explain it What are the strengths of your project that can keep you up in Bear Market?
Stuart James
COO
Users stake PNK to be drawn as jurors. The more PNK a juror has, the more chance they have of being drawn.
SInce PNK is a genuine utility token, we expect its value to increase as the platform is adopted.
Again, I won’t speculate on price but PNK is one of a tiny handful of projects where ICO participants are still well up on their initial participation.
Cryptodiffer Community
Kleros project looks very Different project in Crypto & Blockchain which working on Justice system ! But Why do you think that Blockchain will be helpful for Justice system & explain Blockchains advantages in Kleros project !
Stuart James
COO
I think blockchain will be indispensable to future commercial claims and commerce disputes yes.
I don’t believe we’re going to see traditional high court and violent cases ever make it to blockchain though.
Kleros is very much aiming to hit the massive e-commerce market where 3-5% of all transactions end in dispute. Last year global e-commerce was in the hundreds of billions with the average dispute being for items that cost ~$150
If you buy something for $150, chances of taking someone to court for that are next to none due to costs.
If you do it via Kleros escrow or another platform integrated with Kleros, you could open that dispute for a few $’s and if you’re in the right, receive your money back.
Cryptodiffer Community
What are your Products, Can you name them & How users can take benefits from your products?
Who do you see as your closest competitor and what makes you different from them and how will you try to do better than them?
Stuart James
COO
So, we have the
court.kleros.io (Where cases are sent from our dapps or any integrated dapps)
escrow.kleros.io (Completely open escrow platform with arbitration backed resolution.) <This is a huge use case moving forward.
tokens.kleros.io (A curated list of tokens which have been used by exchanges like Ethfinex and Uniswap.ninja to pull verified data.
Cryptodiffer Community
1. How can you certainly know when jurors vote is not coherent with the group? I did read that they will not receive their arbitration fees and furthermore they lose will some tokens. But how do you control that?
2. It is still possible for jurors to give an idea of their votes, but how should this “idea” be? Is there any particular circumstance in which they can give more than an idea?
Stuart James
COO
1. All votes are public on chain and tied to the jurors address used to stake PNK into the court of their choosing. this is one of the key elements in transparency and being able to stamp out vote rigging for example.
Since they stake their tokens before they are drawn for a case, if they vote coherently, the rewards or PNK lost will automatically be added/deducted at the end of the case.
2. Jurors can write why they voted for the choice they did. They don’t have to but we find jurors are quite happy to disclose why they thought A or B were in the right / wrong.
Cryptodiffer Community
Who are JURORS, what is the criteria employed in selecting jurors and how can we be sure that these jurors are unbiased in their judgements?
You plan to build ESCROW SERVICE, kindly explain more about it
Stuart James
COO
So jurors stake in courts they have knowledge in. We can’t guarantee they will do that but if they stake in courts that they have absolutely no skill in, they will lose money consistently. This is bad for them and good for genuine jurors who do have skills as they make more money.
escrow.kleros.io is already live.
You can find more info about it on our blog.
A few months back we added a lot of ERC20 token payment options too.
Cryptodiffer Community
From a technical perspective whats been the design process you’ve gone through to ensure that you’re going to be able to keep up with the demand once you get the vote!
Are you currently connected to any testnet? How many nodes will you be running in total?
Stuart James
COO
Kleros is fully on mainnet and has been for over a year now. Many new ETH based projects are integrating with us in Q1/Q2 this year also.
In regards to scalability: This is a very pertinent question and one we are slightly at the mercy of Ethereum as a whole.
However, Kleros is a blockchain agnostic platform. We are more than open to creating a similar system on any chain that is interested.
(Slight leak = We are speaking to some large chains interested in our system but nothing fully confirmed).
Cryptodiffer Community
If i were to become a juror, what requirements do i need and the process to undergo to become one?
How do we jurors earn money from Kleros?
Stuart James
COO
To become a juror, all you need to do is have enough PNK for the court you want to stake in. It’s completely open and permissionless so anyone can join.
At the moment there are a small number of courts but we are adding new ones every month.
Jurors earn money from ETH arbitration rewards (payments made to coherent jurors in ETH)
And
PNK is rewarded from jurors who voted incoherently to those that voted coherently. If all jurors vote the same way, only ETH rewards are given and they receive all their PNK back.
Cryptodiffer Community
Tell us about your plans for 2020, what are you currently working on, and are you going to expand the list of big exchanges?
Stuart James
COO
We have loads of stuff coming out soon including a decentralized translation dapp, a fully decentralized governor (control of Kleros platform is no longer in the hands of the team or founders. It already isn’t but this is the final step to full DAO).
We are looking at more exchanges but would like to aim for only the best where possible. We think that Bitfinex is one of, if not the best crypto exchange currently available and are happy to have that along with Uniswap, IDEX, Deversifi and more to come.
Cryptodiffer Community
From technical point of views, most of Project using some firewall or security code and some random locking system as main security code, can you explain how Kleros using pinakion (PNK) as security to protect system from attack, also what’s makes PNK token as security system better than traditional security system
What is the different of joining Kleros as Juror and as partner?what is the benefit for user or investor?
Stuart James
COO
So, we get this question a lot about why we need a token and it’s a good one. But using ETH alone would in fact leave a far less secure system for jurors. PNK acts as a sybil proof / 51% attack proof.
To summarize, Kleros needs its own token as a defense against 51% attacks. This token gives users the ability to be selected as jurors. As such, users should have an interest in holding PNK tokens because of the opportunity that these tokens represent to receive fees and rewards for coherence for arbitrating disputes.
https://medium.com/kleros/why-kleros-needs-a-native-token-5c6c6e39cdfe
Cryptodiffer Community
– Can you explain when and what type of real utility will have through PNK Tokens other than staking?
– in the dapps I see “cryptounlocked”. So can you explain what it is?? and How does it work?
Stuart James
COO
PNK is also used as the governance token for the platform.
Any changes to the platform are sent to governance where all users vote on it using PNK. So the more you have, the more say you have in the governance of the platform.
For example, if someone proposed to change the ETH reward fee in the English language court, this would be put to goverance and all users can vote on it. The result is then automatically updated at the end of the vote.
Cryptounlocked is a decentralized funding platform with milestones set in.
Kind of like Kickstarter but for crypto and with built in milestones in the smart contract.
Kleros also works as an oracle right now and can pull this real world data via our integration with realit.io.
Cryptodiffer Community
Q1: For PNK TOKEN, Does it have or will there be any utility outside of the Kleros ecosystem?
Q2: With the progression of blockchain technology, there has been an endless supply of blockchain projects entering the market. But people is/will prefer to adopt projects that have real world use-cases. So could you tell us Kleros’ real life use-cases or solutions contributing to this? Additionaly, could you please explain how can you survive in this tough market conditions? What is/will your SURVIVAL RECIPE?
Stuart James
COO
1. I think I’ve probably answered in some of the questions above.
2. In terms of survival, we have recently secured funding from both our sale and the government grants which ensure our survival for at least the next two years. We are finalists in another EU blockchain competition with a 1/5 chance of gaining 1million euros to further develop Kleros for the EU institutional market.
On top of this, we still have around 30% of our tokens to sale as we conducted two small sales based on our roadmap milestones being hit. The community has responded to our completing of milestones greatly and we appreciate this.
Cryptodiffer Community
Decentralized Courts concept is seems very different could you please explain can centralized governments, courts can approve Decentralized Courts?
How can we able to Decentralized Courts without internet connections? which countries are you planning to built your ecosystem?
Stuart James
COO
Traditional courts and Kleros courts are unlikely to cross for most of our use cases. We are opt-in meaning both parties have already agreed to use our dispute resolution. If, after a Kleros result is made and one is not happy with it, they can appeal. If, at the very end, they are still not happy, they could in theory take it to traditional courts but the cost of doing so would be so high and the chance of getting anything back so low, it’s unlikely.
Cryptodiffer Community
Is Kleros going to ask for Certificates or any documentation in order to Proof the Experience on these matters?
The biggest dilemma as of now in crypto is volatility and liquidity issues. What steps have been taken by both of your companies to overcome it?
Stuart James
COO
At the moment, there is no KYC or documentation needed for jurors. Instead, Kleros uses crypto economic incentives to encourage jurors to stake in courts they are skilled in. If they don’t, they will lose money and if they do, they have a higher chance of making money and gaining rewards.
Cryptodiffer Community
Is Kleros going to ask for Certificates or any documentation in order to Proof the Experience on these matters?
The biggest dilemma as of now in crypto is volatility and liquidity issues. What steps have been taken by both of your companies to overcome it?
Stuart James
COO
As part of our last sale round, we pledged 10% of all funds to go towards liquidity. We recently added around $250k to Uniswap and will soon add another lot of liquidity to IDEX + Bitfinex once we’ve fully tested the API and so.
Cryptodiffer Community
Who are the developers behind Kleros? Are they enough qualified to handle and serve millions of customers and developers? Are they having enough experience?
Stuart James
COO
You can see all our team on the kleros.io about tab.
I’m not a dev myself however, I have complete faith in the quality of the team. We have been together now for over two years and are very tightly knit. We have a highly regarded academic as a CEO (Singularity Alumni) who has spoken at nearly every major University in the West and our CTO is probably one of the top 5 smart contract auditors / writers in the whole ecosystem.
He has audited many of the biggest names and also disclosed the Fairwin vulnerability recently.
Cryptodiffer Community
What are your long-term vision of where the industry KLEROS work? How do you plan when someday there will be another project with more innovative technology can replace KLEROS?
Stuart James
COO
Like any free market, Kleros has to strive to be the market leader. So far, we are and our only direct competitor is Aragon who are using a forked version of our very own court.
Imitation is the highest form of flattery of course.
Cryptodiffer Community
How does KLEROS work?
Stuart James
COO
I think the best explanation to help here without writing hundreds of words would be to take a look at our One Pager
https://kleros.io/onepager_en.pdf
You can also check kleros.io and try the courts also.
Cryptodiffer Community
Are you planning on integrating your project with other ethereum projects? I would think there might be big potential in this!
Stuart James
COO
Absolutely!
We already have a number of integrations but there are currently 4-5 more being worked on in the background including some big names!
Cryptodiffer Community
You have quite nice partners, what kind of role do they play in the ecosystem of Kleros?
Courts generate revenue from being funded by governments, so how does Kleros plan to generate revenue from its Decentralized courts(do you have the backing of any government)?
Stuart James
COO
The more cases that Kleros solves, the more jurors it attracts. The more jurors it attracts, the scarcer PNK will become and the higher the value will become. At least, that’s the network effect theory we are built around.
It is possible through governance, that Cooperative Kleros could take a small fee for every case resolved but as it stands, that is not the case. All token holders would have to vote on this for it to happen also. The team can not just implement these things on their own.
Cryptodiffer Community
can the court cleric be compared to the court in the real world? Are there the same rules of dispute laws in the Clerical Court as others?
Stuart James
COO
Each court has a policy document which clearly explains the purpose of the court and how the cases should be viewed. These documents are important to help jurors understand the nature of the court and what is / isn’t valid when voting.
Cryptodiffer Community
Kleros is the world’s first decentralized court, espcially revolution in Dispute case. So, i want to know which way will Kleros use to verify the proofs of sellers and buyers in a specific dispute case and how will Kleros clarify these proofs?
Can the justice on Kleros be manipulated? I mean, if its a big dispute case with huge fund related, can the fraud impacts the node validators who play proof verification roles on Kleros and make a wrong decision on the case and the fraud take profit from it?
Stuart James
COO
I didn’t fully understand the question but let me see if I can answer.
So, verifying evidence is a good point and it is to the benefit of the buyer/ seller to provide quality and truthful evidence as it’s likely false evidence will be found by our jurors.
We had a case on our token curated registry dapp which was recently used to decentralize token listings on both Ethfinex and Bitfinex in which one of the projects team members stated to having worked at Oxford University in the past.
One of our jurors could not find proof of this and in the end, contacted Oxford University to find out if this was true. It was in fact a lie and the project lost their challenge to list. All jurors on this case made a round $100-200 for their work of a few hours.
Cryptodiffer Community
What are the main markets that KLEROS is focusing now? What is your strategy to access to these markets?
You organized an AMA session very rewarding and received a lot of questions related to utilities and technology, future vision, … So now I want to ask what do you want to receive from the community?
Stuart James
COO
Main markets are expanding our blockchain footprint with more integrations and further development to open up Kleros to all chains (not just Ethereum). This latter part will take a little more time however the integrations are definitely going to be happening this year.
I’d just like to say a massive thanks to everyone here for taking the time to both ask questions, and wait for me to type out the answers!
Come and join our Telegram if you want to engage further with Kleros and the rest of the team
https://t.me/kleros
