We’re hyped on oracles. In ancient Delphi, a priestess sat in a mystical cave, speaking in riddles to help seekers find a higher form of truth. In crypto, we look to oracles to interact with off chain data as assertions of truth in a reliable and accessible manner. These ideas have some interesting similarities, and we think neither are going away any time soon. Computation of onchain processes will become more common, more diverse in their intentions, and will need more supple oracle inputs. And, as humans, we will continue to use various types of divine insight and introspection to manage our goals, ethics and meandering paths.
Coordinape has been in the oracle game for some time already. In a way, we’ve been dabbling in both of these things at once, as human intuition meets trustless computation. We are in the business of helping people collaborate, consider each other’s value and generate context for onchain actions. Historically, this has been through a simple social tool: the Gift Circle, which allows a collective truth to be authored for DAOs and working teams. The Gift Circle has been used for internal decisions such as distributions of credentials, governance or payment tokens, in some ways not unlike like any other oracle (i.e. Chainlink or AMMs to help process complex DeFi transactions).
Now, we’re building something more generally available. Recently, we’ve brought GIVE, the same medium of exchange in Gift Circles, way out into the open. Anyone can send it on Farcaster or in CoLinks, to assign value to someone else’s skills As of just this month, GIVE histories are being rolled up onchain for general use and consumption in an EAS (Ethereum Attestation Service) data layer that any contract on Base, or any app with the ability to read onchain data, can use. What’s more: anyone can add to it. The Social Oracle (Base schema #261) is open for any and all data providers that want to become a trusted source.
We’re calling it the Social Oracle, because it sounds cool. But, it makes sense: the schema takes in social data from a broad range of web3 actors and peer-to-peer actions, and provides a reliable format and data source for the consumption and assessment of collective knowledge. The Social Oracle is a general repository for the context and reputation of any wallet that participates in GIVE, and soon even more than that (we have plans). Every time a GIVE is sent, we bring that GIVE onchain along with its associated natural language context and some other useful data, creating an attestation trace connecting one wallet to another.
We think this becomes useful for many onchain user stories, such as value accrual and distribution, discovery and connection, research and attribution. And, we think this kind of pattern, using collective trusted intentions to help qualify user experience and ownership, is going to help define how the next phase of the internet works. Onchain and online will become more and more related, and we’re here for it.
Want to get involved? Find us in our discord. We are working on incentivizing the first round of Social Oracle builders. The Social Oracle is an open tool and Schelling point for anyone to add to and use, because we really are all gonna make it together.
