Sphere — Problem-Solution Map
This index presents the Sphere project organized by the human problems it solves. Each section frames a fundamental challenge, then shows which concepts address it. The best way to understand why each piece exists.
How do we TRUST each other online?
Section titled “How do we TRUST each other online?”Current social platforms reduce human relationships to binary states (friend/not friend, follower/not follower) and provide no meaningful way to express or verify trust. Fake accounts, bots, and manipulation are rampant because identity and reputation have no decentralized foundation.
Solutions:
Trust-Based Social Network — Replace the flat social graph with typed, directional, weighted connections. “Knows” is different from “trusts” is different from “is member of.” Connections can be reciprocated or one-sided. The graph actually models how human trust works.
Social Tokens — Layered reputation tracking. Peer-to-peer tokens (trust, mistrust, recommend) provide first-hand signals. Verified tokens (checked by third parties, judged by juries) add accountability. Time limits prevent permanent stigma or unearned reputation.
Identity — The hardest piece. 1-to-1 identity (one person = one account) is ideal but may be impossible to enforce without tyranny. The pragmatic approach: pseudonymity with optional verification layers, and social recovery instead of centralized password resets.
How do we ORGANIZE together?
Section titled “How do we ORGANIZE together?”Human groups range from two friends to nation-states, but our digital tools mostly offer only flat member lists, admin permissions, and maybe a few role labels. Complex organizations with nested teams, elected leadership, and evolving structures have no adequate digital representation.
Solutions:
Circles and Spheres — A composable group model. Circles provide simple structures (autocratic, representative, pure, virtual). Spheres nest circles and other spheres into complex organizations. A sphere can contain a board circle, multiple committee circles, and sub-spheres for departments — each with their own governance rules.
Governance Engine — The framework that makes complex organization possible. Four elements (Entities, Objects, Procedures, Connections) form an activity graph that can represent any governance structure. The key feature: governance engines can modify themselves, enabling organizations to evolve their own rules.
Tribe Unification Protocol — Online communities inevitably fragment and duplicate. Formal protocols (using set theory) handle merging and splitting groups, so community evolution is structured rather than chaotic.
Sphere Localization — Organizations often need a geographic dimension. Cryptographic place protocols enable local organization without surveillance.
How do we DECIDE together?
Section titled “How do we DECIDE together?”Democratic decision-making is hard. Pure direct democracy doesn’t scale (not everyone can be informed about everything). Pure representation concentrates too much power. Most digital tools offer only simple polls.
Solutions:
Governance Engine — Navigate the full spectrum between direct democracy and centralized authority. Different decisions call for different processes — a budget needs financial oversight, a dispute needs a court, a strategic direction needs an assembly. The governance engine lets organizations mix and match.
Democratic Procedures — A comprehensive toolkit: proposals, votes, elections, referenda, courts, councils, committees, task forces, boards, advisory panels, town halls, petitions, audits, constitutional amendments, recall procedures, and more. Each is a composable building block.
Decentral Voting Systems — Privacy-preserving cryptographic voting. The “Stille Post” votechain lets votes be evaluated in aggregate without revealing individual choices. Essential for honest voting without fear of retribution.
Value Networks — Beyond choosing representatives: vote on values directly. Weighted voting lets you express confidence, not just preference. Destructive voting lets you express strong opposition. Value objects are formally defined with legal descriptions.
E-Democracy — The application of all the above to real-world governance, enabling participation beyond periodic elections.
How do we BUILD together?
Section titled “How do we BUILD together?”Open-source software is the backbone of the internet, yet most contributors are unpaid volunteers. There’s no sustainable economic model for independent open-source development. Feature requests pile up with no way to prioritize or fund them.
Solutions:
QuestBoard — The core mechanism. Users post feature requests with token bounties. Other supporters add funds. Developers accept quests and earn rewards on completion. Smart contracts handle escrow. Dispute resolution protocols handle conflicts. Hard problems accrue “challenge rating” and larger reward pools.
Open-Source Development — The broader vision: not just open-source, but open-development. Network-native rewards for continuous development, testing, and contribution. A move from corporate sponsorship to community-funded, democratically-steered development.
Social Tokens — Reputation tracking for developers. Past contributions, completed quests, and challenge ratings build a verifiable track record. New developers can start with small quests and work their way up.
Governance Engine — Democratic allocation of development resources. For example: 20% of quest funds go to a common pool redistributed by community vote for invisible but important work (optimization, security, infrastructure).
How do we LEARN together?
Section titled “How do we LEARN together?”Universities are physical institutions that haven’t adapted to the internet. Research is gatekept by journals, education by tuition, and credentials by institutional authority. Knowledge verification relies on centralized peer review that is slow, biased, and opaque.
Solutions:
Decentral University — Decompose the university into core functions (research, teaching, accreditation, identity, document management) and rebuild each on decentralized protocols. Open access to education and credentialing.
Decentral Knowledge Verification — Decentralized peer review and fact-checking. Network-based reputation tracking for reviewers. Governance engine procedures for handling disputes over knowledge claims.
Social Tokens — Verifiable credentials without institutional gatekeepers. Accreditation tokens that prove skills and knowledge, issued through decentralized verification processes.
QuestBoard — Fund and coordinate research tasks. Bounties for solving research problems, with verification protocols ensuring quality.
How do we ALIGN technology with human values?
Section titled “How do we ALIGN technology with human values?”AI is becoming powerful enough to reshape society, but it’s controlled by a few companies optimizing for their own interests. Current alignment techniques (RLHF, reward modeling) are primitive and centralized. We can’t align AI with “human values” if we haven’t even agreed on what those values are.
Solutions:
AI Alignment — Decentralize on two levels: (1) open-source access to AI technology itself, and (2) democratic systems for expressing collective values that feed into AI training. The Sphere infrastructure provides the democratic machinery.
Value Networks — Value objects formally define values with legal descriptions, examples, and even AI training data. Democratic voting on these values creates a living, evolving representation of collective human will.
Governance Engine — Complex voting and polling infrastructure that can feed nuanced, weighted, multi-dimensional value signals into AI alignment processes — far beyond simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down feedback.
Open-Source Development — Ensuring AI technology itself remains accessible. Corporate monopoly on AI is as dangerous as misalignment.
How do we OWN our digital lives?
Section titled “How do we OWN our digital lives?”Current platforms own our data, control our feeds, and monetize our attention. We have no meaningful choice about how our information is stored, shared, or used. Privacy settings are binary and controlled by the platform, not the user.
Solutions:
Web3 Social Media — Users store their own data (or choose trusted nodes to store it). Sharing conditions go far beyond public/private: “friend of friend only”, “same sphere members”, “minimum trust score required.”
Trust-Based Social Network — The permission system gives fine-grained control over both outgoing and incoming information. You control not just what you share, but what you receive — no algorithmic manipulation of your attention.
Identity — Account recovery through your social network rather than a central authority. Your identity belongs to you and your trusted connections, not a platform.
Motivation and Principles — The ownership principle: you own your time, your attention, your data, your algorithms. This is a design constraint, not an afterthought.
Foundation
Section titled “Foundation”All solutions are built on:
Technical Architecture — The three-layer software stack (Blockchain, Network, Application) and the consensus protocols (Proof of Work, Proof of Chain, Proof of Convergence) that make the system decentralized and resilient.
Motivation and Principles — The five principles that inform every design decision: Decentralization, Transparency, Ownership, Trust, Cooperation.