Challenge Overview
Project Overview
Welcome to SoftBank ideation challenge series.
The goal of this challenge is to come up with idea that will motivate miners in a Blockchain network constructed by Ethereum (consortium type) for International Donation Platform prototype system.
Background
About an year ago, SoftBank has asked the topcoder community to create prototype of International Donation Platform using Blockchain network with Ethereum.
Although you do not need to know about the previous prototype to understand and participate to this challenge, if you are interested following link was the first of it’s challenges:
https://www.topcoder.com/challenge-details/30052578/?type=design
And application screenshot provided here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B09MHaQWdWfKVTRoQkd1bWVFTmM
As a background of this project, SoftBank thinks Blockchain is a good fit for International Donation Platform as it provides following advantages from existing technology:
1. It can reduce the current transaction cost drastically, meaning the donations made can be put into beneficiary’s hand as much as possible.
2. Transparency on how donations are used and who the beneficiaries are clear, since traceability is secured using Blockchain.
Above is an image of the participating individuals and organization in this donation platform. In traditional donation case, donor’s money will be collected and goes through multiple donation groups to finally goes to the hands of beneficiaries.
If the transactions are built with legacy system architecture and exchanging money per each transaction, this causes high intermediate costs. Meaning, final amount of money that beneficiary can get will be cut away during the transactions.
SoftBank sees that using Blockchain as shown in the diagram will reduce these intermediate costs.
In the prototype, Blockchain network is based on Ethereum (consortium type), where we will need Miners to be involved.
Competition Task Overview
This challenge is an enhancement of this prototype to ask the community to come up with idea to motivate miners in this consortium based network.
If the prototype is going to be used as production system, it is necessary to secure the miners participating in the network.
We would like to hear idea that will give incentives to motivate miners to participate in the network, and getting many miners as possible.
Key points to think about are:
1. Miners are “volunteers”, meaning we would need an idea and mechanism that mining cost will not use the actual donated money, or miners should be motivated other than money.
2. Miners should not purely be motivated by volunteer act of giving resources and time for “a good cause”, but have some other reasonable motivation to participate into the network. So that we can gather as much miners as possible.
Example:
Following are one of the example to motivate miners that the customer came up with for you to understanding the type of idea we’re looking for:
Anyone can participate in mining by playing a game on a smartphone and walking. SoftBank or any participating organization like the Game company will prepare the mining nodes. While users are playing the game, the mining happens in the background through triggers from the game. The game could provide incentive items to the user according to the number of successful mining. The key here is users of the game (there will be many users) are the actual miners and not the organization who prepare the mining nodes. This should make this blockchain network secure, open, and reliable.
Requirement:
1. Idea should clarify all the actors and their motivation to participate into this mining economy.
2. We’re looking for idea that will not allocate funds from donors, or make that minimum as possible.
3. We’re looking for idea that does not rely on pure volunteer work where users will just join because it is for a good cause, but some other reasonable motivation.
4. We’re looking for idea that many people would want to join (as many as possible)
Notes:
The blockchain network uses Ethereum
1. We assume to be consortium type network
2. Although we assume the consensus algorithm is Proof of Work, you are free to come up with other consensus algorithm if it fits your idea.
Output Format
1. A document more than 4 pages in Word or PDF format to describe your architecture.
2. It should be written in plain English.
3. Use of charts, diagrams and tables to explain your ideas is highly encouraged.
Judging Criteria
As an ideation challenge, this contest will be judged subjectively by the client and Topcoder. However, the following criteria will largely be the basis for the judgement. We will be sharing the scores to forums for each submissions after the challenge:
1. Completeness and Innovativity (40%)
Is your idea capture requirements correctly?
Can your idea attract many people as possible that they would want to join the network as miners?
Is your idea complete with all the actors involved, and all having some motivation to join the network?
2. Feasibility (40%)
Is your idea feasible and realistic?
Is your idea easy to do trial on and actionable?
3. Readability (20%)
Easy to understand.
Tables and figures are highly recommended.
Is document clear on the assumptions you made, what is your unique idea that could differentiate from other submissions.
Checkpoint
1. We are awarding 5 checkpoint prizes at $100 for each chosen winner. Checkpoint submissions must be submited by 03/30/2017 at 21:00 EDT
2. You do not have to submit for checkpoint to earn final prizes. But in order to qualify for the checkpoint prizes you must submit to the final round.