ATARCA

Data markets and markets for other digital goods are failing. At the same time, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has been suggested as a means to create new value and new economic structures. However, the underlying economic phenomena, especially the structural characteristics of the digital goods, are poorly understood. For over half a century, economists have made a distinction between rival and nonrival goods. Rival goods lose value when consumed, while nonrival ones may be used repeatedly, without losing value. In Ostrom's terms, the value of rival goods gets subtracted upon use; their subtractability is positive. But there has been increasing indications that many information and digital goods are anti-rival in nature. Anti-rival goods gain value when used; their subtractability is negative. Therefore their economics is also fundamentally different from that of other goods. Most importantly, creating a market price — or, more precisely, open market valuation — for them requires, beyond open markets, additional regulative or technological constructions, such as IPR or DRM, in addition to the market mechanisms. We believe that this structural disparity is a root cause for the market failures in the digital goods and data markets, behind the advent of social media monopolies, poorly working or nonexistent markets for industrial data, and many existing data markets (such as municipal ones) reducing to effectively near-zero price. In ATARCA, we create cryptographically protected anti-rival tokens and test their applicability to governing industrial data markets and fostering cooperation in community driven currencies. If successful, this technology will not only help to properly organise the markets for data and other digital goods, but provide the structural fundamentals of a new type of economic growth. This will allow the societies at large to more widely explore structurally new incentives for systemic sustainability and scalable systemic intelligence.

2021

2023