In order to be successful, the task of address labeling and stakeholder analysis in crypto can only ever be partially automated.
While machine learning can help frame the field of research, the human element is crucial to extracting context from market events.
This is why today we are happy to announce Wallet Hunters, our new rewards program for crowdsourced market research, which aims to bring added transparency to the crypto markets and shine a light on the behavior of its key stakeholders.
Since our inception in 2017, we have wanted to build a truly decentralized platform for market research and analysis, and Wallet Hunters is by far our biggest step towards that goal.
While originally built for Santiment and its users, we equally believe that Wallet Hunters can be easily repurposed and leveraged by any crypto project that wants to crowdsource certain research tasks and reward its community’s effort and expertise.
In Wallet Hunters, community members can take on one of the two available roles - Hunters and Sheriffs.
Hunters are the worker bees of the system. They carry out - and get rewarded for - any number of market research tasks, which can include requests for address labels, x or any other type of stakeholder analysis.
There are few main reasons why someone would want to become a Hunter. On the one hand, Hunters help provide much-needed transparency and shine a light on their favorite project(s) through completing related research tasks. In doing so, Hunters also get rewarded for their deep market know-how and research prowess.
There are two ways that Hunters can take on market research tasks. They can either:
(1) accept one of the available tasks in the Wanted section - curated by the Santiment team - or (2) create their own task proposals, which will be voted on by other community members.
When publishing a completed task, Hunters need to connect their wallet and sign the transaction on-chain. For this purpose, we have built a relayer solution which allows us to shoulder the transaction costs with our own team wallet.
Santiment will cover the cost of transaction signing for each Hunter’s first completed task. If the task is successfully approved within the next week, the Hunter is granted 3 additional ‘free’ tasks.
Each submitted and completed proposal requires at least 2 YES votes and a 67% supermajority to pass.
Playing the role of quality control, Sheriffs have the ability to vote on task proposals and get rewarded for their input and market expertise. Sheriffs can vote on as many different Hunter proposals as they like.
In case the proposal passes, 20% of the proposal’s total reward pool is distributed among the participating Sheriffs, with a minimum of 10 Reward Tokens received per Sheriff. In case the proposal is denied, Sheriffs will receive a smaller portion of the intended rewards.
In order to become a Sheriff, you need to stake a minimum of 50 SAN tokens, with 1 SAN = 1 voting power. Sheriffs can boost their voting power by staking more SAN tokens during the voting stage.
During the voting stage, each sheriff can vote for or against a proposal only once. Sheriff can't vote for their own proposals.
Similar to Hunters, all Sheriff votes are transmitted on the Ethereum blockchain and require the Sheriffs to sign the transaction(s).
The final role in the system is played by the Mayor, a moderator from the Santiment team that monitors the legitimacy and usefulness of task proposals. The Mayor can discard defective proposals during the voting stage.