Greetings, friends!
It's time to introduce something that Ben and I have been toiling away on in the background for a few months now - Ponder. Ponder is the parent application that will live one layer above Surveycaster, and will house our survey distribution and rewards logic across multiple platforms. It will allow us to set the foundation for a knowledge sharing system that can become much larger than (the already mighty 💪) Surveycaster. And it's something we're trying to make so low friction that you'll really only be interacting with it on social platforms 90% of the time.
The Birth of Ponder
Think for a moment about Xitter polls. They're fast, easy to answer, and the good ones get you excited to learn what the rest of the world thinks of that topic. Ponder is distilling the essence of that experience down, reformulating it, then dosing it with some high-quality, web3 steroids - all thanks to the capabilities of Farcaster.
It started with Surveycaster, which came about as a means to gauge community interest on topics that are relevant to the Farcaster community. But we believe giving more structure to the current system can help make the whole experience more fun, consistent and emotionally rewarding to take part in.
To make this happen, Ponder will live in a unique space between the worlds of an app and a protocol. For now, the app format lets us keep things simple and deliver quality surveys; but we're building Ponder to become a decentralized protocol that will govern and reward the transfer of original human thoughts. You know, simple stuff. But if we're going to get there, we'll need a mechanism to reward good responses. That's where the PNDR token and Ponder Pass come in.
Yes, we do think a token is necessary. You can read more about token details at the end of this post.
First, some numbers
So far on on our quest with Surveycaster we've:
Delivered 66 distinct surveys
Engaged 907 unique Farcasters
Amassed over 1,406 responses
Elicited 3,772 total reactions
These aren’t just numbers. They're a testament to a purple tribe united by curiosity and candor, answering surveys ranging from socially risky (like whether we should have Universal Basic Income) to light-hearted (like when we'll get our first real AI friends).
Why Farcaster?
We hitched our wagon to Farcaster not just for its "sufficiently decentralized" promise but because of you – the community. The quality of discourse here would make Socrates nod approvingly (and yes, he did influence our immaculately rainbow-bearded logo). By engaging the high signal Farcaster community as an initial test lab, we're able to resolve much of the zero-to-one distribution problem - and we'll explore replicating this across other decentralized social networks in the future. We're focusing on Farcaster for now, but as long as a wallet is attached to the respondent on a given platform, Ponder surveys will be simple to implement.
How we're thinking about credentials & using EAS Base
Right now, being on Farcaster is its own credential. You have to get through the gauntlet of Dan Romero, or be invited by someone who did. But imagine a world where we can identify and harness the wisdom of verified experts, as proven by immutable credentials on chain. Our test with Research Hub gave us a (very limited) sneak peek. With the erosion of institutional trust leaving knowledge voids in its wake, a transparent network of blockchain-backed experts might be a legitimate, real solution.
To that end, we're planning to use the Ethereum Attestation Service (Base) to log all survey transactions at the most primitive level with a brand new schema we're developing. What this means, in short, is that your answers to surveys will begin to aggregate towards you having your own knowledge credential that you can carry with you outside of Ponder. More on this in a later blog post, because it's awesome.
Why this all matters
But we still need to answer, "Why Ponder?". The reality is, we're teetering on the brink of an era dominated by AI-generated content. While 95%+ of online content is currently human, in a few years we'll see that flipped, with most being crafted by our silicon counterparts. In that new world Ponder will continue to exist as a bastion of unfiltered human sentiment. We believe in the uniqueness of human experience that's been informed by both nature and nurture - one that AI, however advanced, may never* replicate.
In fact, we may need tools like Ponder to help solve the alignment problem that's rapidly come into focus. Human input is a critical element in the feedback loop for training modern LLMs - incredibly, there were only a few dozen people doing this at OpenAI in the early stages of ChatGPT development. They just put out a call for experts in two dozen research areas - imagine if we could incentivize high quality input from real humans on a global scale. Ponder - in its final form - will be able to help solve this.
In short, Ponder aims to be the lighthouse of genuine human insight standing above an ocean of AI content.
Looking into the future
Ponder is more than a product. It’s a harbinger of a new chapter in digital discourse, and a way to inject human insights into an ever more algorithmic reality. It’s early days, and while AI might consume vast swathes of our digital playing fields, we're here to ensure that the flame of human insight continues burning bright. All you need to do to participate, for now, is to keep answering the survey questions that are delivered every week.
Hop in. The Ponder odyssey is just beginning.
Colin & Ben
Want to get the Ponder Pass? Grab it here
Want to learn more about the PNDR reputation & token distribution system? Check out this page
