The Public Democracy team has worked to harness the value of real world engagement for over a decade, and we see great potential in blockchain to realize our vision of empowering the people to share in the value of the data they create.

We are already using Public Democracy’s Values Data to advance our corporate mission to align what is right with what works. We are building better data and more meaningful AI systems that reflect users’ values, support their priorities, and allow them to better share in the value of the data they create. Along with our current impact verticals that have grown from the Values Data, we have been exploring ways to combine our Values Data (and numerous other impact values sets we’re empowering communities to create) with blockchain technology to build a new currency of engagement: Umatr (pronounced, “you matter”).

We believe that by developing the Umatr utility token and Umatr crypto-ecosystem to power it, we can incentivize further engagement by users that creates more valuable data, more positive real world outcomes, and more just economic systems.

That process has also led us into deeper explorations around different ways to value and understand data. We believe that we must move toward a system where the value of data is shared with those who create, where people shift from being seen as “users” or “customers” to instead becoming rightly understood as “co-creators” of their data and co-collaborators in the solutions data can provide.

We believe this concept that you have a right to share in the value of the data you create is a much healthier, just, and equitable lens for a discussion around data rights than the current one focused around privacy. Privacy is a right most valued by those in positions of privileged and control, and in the context of data, has generally only provided individuals the opportunity to destroy the value of the data they create. In the same we would not start a conversation about wages or intellectual rights from the context of privacy, we believe their are better ways to approach the question of ownership and usage of data.

We believe that blockchain-based systems can improve upon our understanding of economic inefficiencies, create better ways to measure and store value, and enable frictionless pathways for better sharing the value back with its creators. We pull all of these ideas together into the Umatr system summarized below and presented in much more detail through our white paper at the bottom, but these concepts are not limited to Umatr. The market-driven solutions presented in our Umatr project can (and we hope will) be applied by other companies and governments outside any blockchain system we develop.

Scarcity vs. Usefulness as a Measure of Value

Much of our economy is based on the value of scarcity; i.e., something has value because there isn’t enough of it to meet demand. Scarcity as a measure of value reflects the primary goals of those who first established the rules of our economic system. It has proven to be an effective means to preserve and store preexisting value. However, it is an inefficient way to grow, share, or build value.

When value is measured by scarcity, we create economically inefficient incentives for individual actors to hoard and concentrate resources based on an underlying assumption that value is determined by a zero-sum approach. It is in the self-interest of all those who hold a scarce resource to reduce the use (circulation) and availability of that resource to ensure demand exceeds supply. Furthermore, if a resource is valuable because it is scarce, actors are incentivized to extract all the value they can out of it, rather than seek to grow more of it.

There is a better, if more challenging, way to collectively measure value: assigning value based on how useful something is.

At a fundamental level, we all know this. This usefulness measurement is how most of us assess the value of the things (and people) in our lives when we are not thinking in terms of fiat currency. When we talk about the “value” of something in our life, it is not because the thing is scarce or because the friend of family member is available only to us. When we are not thinking in terms of money, most of us recognize that value is based on how useful, comforting, or beneficial a thing or relationship is.

By building an economic system based on a value-measure of usefulness, rather than scarcity, we will both utilize a more valid measure of value and one that better aligns the interests of individual actors with those of the broader economic system.

Modern currency is designed to measure an individual’s value based primarily on what they own and what an employer is willing to pay them. These are valid measures, but they fail to reflect all the other valuable contributions individuals make to society through their engagement in community, civic, and social spaces. This shortcoming skews incentives and is a major economic inefficiency.

Umatr will change that by tokenizing human engagement through the blockchain, securing those tokens with our massive data assets, and sharing that newly-realized value back with those who created it. 

This will allow us to both harness the unrealized value of positive human engagement and increase that value by creating a liquid means of exchange for it. We will do all of this within a crypto-economic system that is designed to reward empathy and collaboration over vanity and hoarding, to establish selfish reasons for individuals to seek the common good.

Our White Paper & the Umatr Solution

At Public Democracy, we believe it is not enough to be “right” about something that matters to you or your community. We have to figure out a way to align what is right with what actually works. We recognize that ultimate success in the blockchain space will require more than sound theories and elegant cryptoeconomic models. So, we also aim to solve one of the most significant problems in the crypto space, which is adoption.

Central to our economic design is the need to create a system that can be understood and easily used by a mass audience. Although utilization of blockchain technology is foundational to the functionality of the Umatr token ecosystem, our intent is to offer an interface that does not require users to know what the blockchain is, let alone that it is powering the ecosystem. Users will experience value and empowerment, not blockchain.

If you’ve read this far, however, you will want to know how the blockchain piece of all this works! We think you’ll enjoy delving into our strategy. Our white paper below presents the plan for Umatr. As stated above, however, our hope is that the data applications, economic models, and theories around mobilizing human capital presented in this white paper will be applied in many areas far beyond the ecosystem we are looking to build.

Umatr utility tokens will harness and store the value created by individuals through their contributions in family, community, civic, and social spaces — value that current fiat-based economies are very poor at quantifying and storing, but which is all currently measured through data. We will use data as a value-bridge between crypto and traditional economies and build a system to allow ordinary people to engage in and benefit from the blockchain without even knowing it. All of this will be within a cryptoeconomic system that is designed to reward empathy over vanity and collaboration over hoarding by establishing self-serving reasons for individuals to seek the common good.

Our white paper provides a road map for why and how we plan to accomplish the goals laid out above, what we anticipate evolving to create the right conditions for these technological advancements, and where we hope to take things from there. Now in version 2.0, this white paper has been in development over two years (and is based on over a decade of work building toward this effort).

We have broken this paper into four parts. The first part lays out basic ideas, economic theories, and assumptions at the foundation of the Umatr ecosystem. The second part explains the Umatr ecosystem we are planning to build. We are starting with our fundamentals and what we know we can build in Umatr, but we have designed Umatr and are building it for what will be possible. Accordingly, the third part of this paper lays out next steps and goals for future iterations of Umatr. The fourth and final part provides more information about our current team, our next hires, and includes our glossary.

As you will see, we have put a great deal of thought and time into this project, which was always meant as a collaboration with the broader community. So, we welcome any thoughts, critiques, questions, or other feedback.

Click Here to Download a PDF of our Umatr White Paper