Kleros Project Update - February 2022

Federico Ast -

It has been a while since our last comprehensive Community Update. During this time, the team at Kleros has worked harder than ever to develop and release new products, garner support for our rising movement, expand our team, and so much more.

Main Events of the Past Six Months

May 2021

  • OpenDeFi becomes the first DAO to decentralize its governance through trustless proposal enforcement secured by Kleros.

June 2021

  • Polkamarkets announces that Kleros will resolve its prediction market disputes.
  • Community member Green launches Vagarish, a new search engine for Kleros cases.
  • An updated version of the Kleros Yellow Paper is published.

July 2021

A team dinner during the EthCC conference. Paris, July 2021.
"Decentralized Justice: Protecting Free Speech Online", a presentation by Federico at EthCC on how Kleros can be used for decentralized content moderation. Paris, July 2021.

August 2021

  • Kleros and HatsFinance announce a collaboration for securing bounty programs.

September 2021

  • Kleros Tokens Dapp goes live on ParaSwap.

October 2021

  • A Mexican court accepts a Kleros ruling as valid under Mexican law. This is the first case ever resolved by blockchain arbitration to be accepted in court.
The report on the arbitration case in Mexico, including the court documents.
The announcement event with professional arbitrators Mauricio Virues, Sophie Nappert and Luis Bergolla.
  • Launch of the 5th batch of the Kleros Fellowship of Justice program.
  • Kleros Tokens Dapp surpasses 1,000 registered tokens. It’s currently being used by DeFi apps such as Uniswap, ParaSwap, SushiSwap and Zerion to offer a more secure service to their users.
Kleros Tokens Dapp.
Federico giving the talk "Private Governance: Towards the Self Regulation of the DeFi Ecosystem" at the Liscon Ethereum Conference. Lisbon, October 2021.
Part of the Kleros Team in Lisbon. October 2021.

November 2021

  • Kleros reaches 1000 disputes.
  • Launch of the development of the Kleros Court 2.0 with innovations in scalability, incentives design, user experience and much more.
  • Proof of Humanity reaches 10,000 registered profiles.
A presentation by Federico at the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Society at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. October 2021.

December 2021

  • Participants of the 5th Batch of the Kleros Fellowship of Justice are accepted.
  • Start of a collaboration with CurioDAO for the verification of real world assets in NFT markets.

January 2022

  • Launch of a pilot for the use of Kleros for dispute resolution in NFT markets.
Kleros' icosahedron at ETHDenver. February 2022.

Development Activities

The current version of the Kleros protocol has been live for almost three years. When it was launched, in March 2019, DeFi was in its infancy and few people even knew what an NFT was.

In 2022, the Web3 ecosystem is much more mature and the pandemic transformed the way in which we work, trade... and deliver justice.

In November 2021, we released the specs and officially launched the development of Kleros 2.0. The new release, which is expected for Q3 2022, brings innovations in scalability, economic design, user experience and much more.

Kleros 2.0 will be multi-chain. The core court contract will live on a “home” chain and will be able to pass rulings to arbitrable contracts on other “foreign” chains.

It will also bring a wider selection of voting systems stemming from our research in social choice theory. This includes some highly demanded functionalities such as the possibility to use a system of 1 user/1 vote based on profiles registered on Proof of Humanity.

Kleros 2.0 will also bring mechanisms to punish jurors who misbehave by accepting bribes, cartelling or revealing their votes too early.

The new version comes with a highly modular architecture which will be able to quickly incorporate new functionalities without the need to make changes into the core court contract.

For a general overview of all the innovations in the mechanism design of Kleros 2.0, watch this presentation by our director of research William George.
A flowchart with the smart contracts interactions of Kleros 2.0.

Kleros 2.0 also comes with a beautiful new interface by Plinio. Many workshops were organized with the team in order to discuss the details and collaboratively decide on the features for the new version of the court. Nearly 50 community members participated in testing of the prototype.

A sneak peek of the new Kleros juror dashboard in dark mode by our master designer Plinio.
To learn more about the specs for Kleros 2.0, read this article.

Proof of Humanity

In March 2021, the anti-sybil registry Proof of Humanity was launched. This platform uses Kleros curation technology to produce a curated list of unique humans.

Over 14,000 users were registered. All accepted profiles into the PoH registry start dripping a UBI token developed by the Democracy Earth Foundation.

The presentation video for Proof of Humanity.
The video submission by Vitalik.

Some very interesting Kleros cases arose from the PoH registry. For example, one that involved Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki on whether he was "facing the camera" as it was required by the rules.

A piece of evidence in Kevin Owocki's case.
Our developer Matt at the Proof of Humanity meetup in Paris. July 2021.
A Kleros icosahedron with a Proof of Humanity sticker. Lisbon, October 2021.
"Universal Basic Income with Proof of Humanity", the talk by Santiago Siri at the EthCC conference. Paris, July 2021.

A very dense ecosystem is being built on top of Proof of Humanity, including integrations by Gitcoin, Ripio and Proof of Integrity.

Proof of Integrity, a product for social good built on top of the Proof of Humanity protocol.

Research Activities

Kleros has an active research team in fields ranging from cryptoeconomics to law. These materials have been critical for defining the core architecture of Kleros 2.0 and developing new use cases. Our research is published in different outlets for the benefit of the wider community.

An article on p+epsilon attacks published by William George and Clément Lesaege on the Cryptoeconomic Systems journal.
"Information Flow Management in Cryptoeconomics: Antiprevelation in Kleros", a talk by William George at the EthCC conference. Paris, July 2021.

Our research team is involved in the current debates within the Ethereum ecosystem. In September, a controversy arose between Nathan Schneider and Vitalik Buterin on governance and cryptoeconomics. Here is our director of research’s take on the matter: Kleros and the Advantages and Limitations of Cryptoeconomics.

Kleros also has an active community of researchers on different areas of the protocol.

Some academic pieces about Kleros:

A full section on Kleros in the "Cambridge Handbook of Lawyering in the Digital Age" published by Cambridge University Press.

The Kleros Fellowship of Justice welcomed its' 5th cohort and keeps fostering high level research about the use cases of the Kleros protocol. In this particular cohort, there was a high interest in the use of Kleros for resolving disputes in the context of NFT markets.

Here are some testimonials from participants in previous batches of the Fellowship.

Luis Bergolla, a PhD candidate at the Stanford Law School, who participated in the first batch of the Kleros Fellowship.
Australian arbitrator Jake Lowther, a participant in the third batch of the Fellowship.

The fourth batch of the Fellowship had a special track in collaboration with the Maker Foundation for the use of Kleros for compliance for real world assets in the Maker protocol.

Securities lawyer Marvin Coleby was chosen for this track and these are the results of his research:

Community Development

The team keeps spreading the message of decentralized justice in different venues and formats. Check some of the highlights:

Federico in conversation with David Orban about Kleros as the justice system for the coming age of the metaverse.
A conversation between Federico and Nieves Zuberbuhler on Kleros, stable currencies and financial inclusion.
The talk by Jimmy Ragosa about the use of Kleros as a supreme court during the EthCC conference. Paris, July 2021.
A presentation by Clément at Alyra. September 2021.
A panel with Joe Raczynski, Sophie Nappert, Primavera de Filippi and Sean McCarthy on the legal challenges of NFTs. Click here to listen.
Federico presenting Kleros' use case for content moderation at a Bluesky community meetup. January 2022.
A panel on dispute resolution in the metaverse organized by Mishkon de Reya. December 2021.
Clément Lesaege presenting at the panel "DxDAO: the future of prediction markets". Lisbon, October 2021.
Teams building at the hackathon organized by Kleros during EthCC. Paris, July 2021.
A meetup of the Kleros Argentina community in Cafayate, Salta. October 2021.
Our developer Aleix speaking at Crypto Plaza Madrid. November 2021.
A discussion on Kleros and mechanism design at Singapore based Economics Design community.

The Launch of the Kleros Incubator

In July 2021, we launched the application process for the first batch of the Kleros incubator, a program which provides company building and financial support to teams building on top of the Kleros protocol.

Dozens of teams applied to the 3 month incubation program in Lisbon including strategy, prototyping, smart contract security, marketing and legal workshops.

The presentation video for the Kleros Incubator.

Two teams were selected for the first cohort of the incubator: Reactions and OpenVino.

Federico presenting at the launch of the Kleros Incubator. Lisbon, October 2021.
A strategy design session at the Kleros Incubator.
Kleros Director of Research William George making a presentation on mechanism design as a workshop of the Kleros Incubator.
A UX/UI workshop by Plinio.
The Kleros Incubator demo day where incubated projects showed their progress to the community. January 2022.

Financials

Total cumulative expenses since the start of the Kleros Project.
Cooperative Kleros burning rate as of December 2021.
Cooperative Kleros burning date breakdown as of December 2021.

Conclusion

Over the past months, we have continued with our goal of making Kleros a larger part of the Web3 ecosystem. The arrival of Kleros 2.0 will also enable a number of new and massive use cases requiring lower costs such as curation for NFT marketplaces and content moderation.

The growth of Kleros integrations from January 2021 to January 2022.