Do you remember when videos of @phil working out in jeans took over the timeline? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one who misses it.
The videos and casts were part of Hyperfit, an impromptu commitment club conceived by @nonlinear.eth, who wanted a fun way to incentivize himself to get moving again.
The premise was simple: the three of us would pay 0.02 ETH into a 7-day @hypersub, commit to a workout each day in /commitment, and cast proof of commitment. Do it every day and we get our money back, miss a day and we lose our money.
The outcome was fantastic: we each completed our daily commitment every day, we all got our money back (@nonlinear.eth even gave his share to @phil and me), and we had a blast completing it with each other — and with everyone who replied to our casts on Warpcast and cheered us on.
I have found participating in /firstdraft, another onchain commitment club with financial stakes, to be just as rewarding for the same reasons.
In fact, combining financial incentives (via @hypersub) and the power of community (via @warpcast) leverages both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that — when built onchain — could be a huge unlock for all accountability groups.
Even if the technology is new, accountability groups are not; their history dates back centuries.
Students of Stoicism would gather in 4th century BCE to discuss concepts and hold each other accountable for living in accordance with stoic principles.
Literary societies, like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkiens’ the Inklings in the 1930s, regularly met to share and critique each other’s work.
Temperance Societies, Alcoholics Anonymous, Study Groups. These are all accountability groups.
Throughout history, few of these were driven by obvious financial incentives, but rather by mutual support, consistent reinforcement, and shared commitment to a goal.
That is, until the late 20th century when accountability groups with financial stakes began to gain popularity.
Weight Watchers went from free to paid. Gym pacts surfaced in which members would commit to a certain number of visits with financial penalties for non-compliance. Mastermind groups began to charge as participants became more entrepreneurial.
What led to both the growth of accountability groups and subsequently the introduction of financial incentives to these groups? The internet.
The introduction of internet platforms — with community-building tools and online payment systems — made it significantly easier to both create and find groups and to implement, track, and manage financial incentives at scale.
As a result, there was an explosion of more sophisticated and wide-reaching accountability groups, commitment clubs, and online communities that could all effectively and efficiently incorporate financial stakes.
Now consider if these communities moved onchain, leveraging products like Warpcast and Hypersub as we did for Hyperfit. What would that unlock?
Portable, user-owned identity and social graph: you can now try new apps without losing your social connections or history.
This means you can more easily find like-minded people when all of your existing connections and interests can be leveraged to find and form new accountability groups or challenges quickly — as we’ve already seen with the three-person /hyperfit to a 50+ person /higher-athletics challenge to a 200+ person /success channel.Interoperability: your identity and activity can now integrate across all onchain apps.
This means your achievements in /hyperfit or /firstdraft could unlock rewards or status in a fitness-focused app (like Receipts) or a writing-focused app (like Paragraph). In fact, /firstdraft and Paragraph are already collaborating on a raffle.Programmable incentives and automated payouts: you may now get your funds more quickly, efficiently, and transparently than ever before.
Using @hypersub and @splits smart contracts, paired with @warpcast content (verifiable by Farcaster Hubs), automates payout execution with a clear, auditable trail of all transactions; this reduces operational overhead and human error and potentially even transaction costs.
While the onchain tech still isn’t ready for mainstream, we should celebrate the emerging case studies from which we can iterate. We should also look to existing commitment contract products as a ripe opportunity for more experimentation.
Take StickK — a first-of-its-kind platform launched in 2008 by two Yale economists that allowed users to create “commitment contracts” for personal goals (like weight loss, smoking, exercise) with financial stakes.
Nearly 15 years later, StickK still exists today with hundreds and thousands of users. Corporations use StickK for employee wellness programs. Academic institutions use StickK for research on behavior change and commitment devices. Features have expanded to include other personal goals and new stakeholders to forfeit money, such as a charity or friends.
Now imagine StickK built onchain. Let’s say you want to create an accountability group to quit complaining.
Using Farcaster, StickK onchain lets you you connect your FID.
Using Hypersub, StickK lets you create a smart contract-based commitment contract that holds your financial stakes in escrow until goal verification (no complaining) and fund distribution is done (manually for now, automated in the future).
Using Farcaster and Hypersub, StickK automatically creates a new channel (/no-complaints) for you once the smart contract is deployed. All goals and progress updates are automatically posted to the channel. Friends can become “participants” or “referees” or “supporters” of the no complaining challenge as the challenge is shared across social platforms.
And so on and so on. As mentioned, the technology is still too nascent for mainstream and the lego blocks are still too clunky for a truly seamless user experience — but I’m confident we will get there someday.
And when we do, I anticipate a similar (albeit smaller) explosion of accountability groups, commitment clubs, and communities with financial stakes.