FAQs

What is Algernon?

Our aim is to make it easy for people to find the best content to learn anything. There are a lot of great resources online, the problem is finding the right resource for whatever you're trying to learn. The problem is curation.

In Algernon, you will be shown a map of the entire learning space to be able to hone in on exactly what you need to learn. You would see a curated list of articles, courses and other content to help you get the job done.

Algernon employs curation markets and a decentralized CMS to accomplish this.

What do you mean “own your data”?

In Algernon, users own all the data they create. This includes the content and the metadata (votes, endorsements) you create.

All of the data will be stored on IPFS and will be tied to a content key that you generate and store. Because this data is not hosted by us, you will be responsible for securing your content key and paying for the storage you use.

Why is this data ownership model a big deal?

It's hard to overstate the significance of this. What we are proposing is radically different from the way products are built on the internet today. It is completely orthogonal to the way the internet has evolved.

In this new model, users truly own their data & have the ability to move between platforms at will. No lock-in possible.

We have built a decentralized CMS that can be plugged into any dapp that wants to support user-generated and user-owned content. Have a look at our implementation on our Github repo.

How does the community curation work?

Algernon is broken up by different subject matter each with its own community and native token. Tokens are used to curate the content in a particular subject matter. The token will be issued via a bonding curve; meaning people can enter and exit a community as they see fit.

Users buy & put up tokens (i.e. stake) to add learning resources on a particular subject matter The existing community, ie. the token holders, votes on proposals by staking tokens of their own either for or against. The losing side of a vote gets a portion of their tokens slashed and distributed to the winners.

Using a token allows the incentives of the participants to align to ensure that the content in their Algernon subject matter is high quality and relevant. The staking and slashing methods above help bring in the proverbial skin-in-the-game.

Furthermore, the inclusion of spam content will be clearly visible and will cause the existing token holders to lose faith and exit the system, thus dropping the price of the tokens for everyone including those who have staked against the spam content.

This model also requires token holders to be somewhat familiar with the subject matter they are curating. They would need to be able gauge the quality of content they are voting on.

Why did you build this?

Our aim is to lower the barriers to entry for learning. Doing so, we believe, will unlock vast swaths of human capital that are currently on the sidelines. Read more about our core motivations.

What are you building now? What’s next?

We are currently wrapping up work on the decentralized CMS protocol. We will be opening it up for learners to come and create content soon.