Claim Sponsorship: paying for sentiment data, and viability (request for comments)

1. Ideas & Brainstorming
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The past few months I’ve been building some features around the concept of communities. The gist: users can transform a concept atom into a community by tagging related atoms and (optionally) organizing atoms into lists. For example an “Intuition” atom could tag related atoms like “Web3”, “https://intuition.systems”, “0xbilly.eth”, etc and an “Intuition Useful Resources” list could contain atoms representing related websites, or a “Best Intuition Curators” could contain address atoms like “0xvital.eth” and “zet.box”. My hope is to concentrate network activity arounds hubs that users naturally gravitate towards, interests.

Naturally, I have been brainstorming ways to generate revenue with these features. In my opinion there are MANY ways one could attempt to generate revenue but finding the RIGHT or BEST way to do it is a more challenging task.

It has occurred to me that bunching users together into different communities makes them naturally organize themselves into different target audiences. An “NBA Fans” community and “ETH Denver 2027” community will likely have very different tastes and online behaviors. Since the concept atoms generally make it clear WHAT they are via their name property it would be easier for marketers to target a community, and the same name property is also convenient for inference.

I expect communities to pop up around web3 projects, my Hive Mind included. Many times when releasing apps/features I have wanted feedback and opinions from my users or even the Intuition community as a whole. When you have a.) users who want to give opinions and want TRUST tokens, b.) projects who want opinions and have $$$, and c.) a system that is great for expressing opinions and transferring value, then perhaps we should find a way to tie them all together. For this reason I am proposing the concept of claim sponsorship.

Claim Sponsorship

Imagine Bob has been building on the Intuition blockchain for the past year and just released a major update to their MyWidget dapp. Since this dapp is relevant in the ecosystem there already exists a “MyWidget” concept atom on Intuition, and over the months it has turned into a small community where related claims are regularly made and staked upon.

Bob wants to know what the community thinks of the new MyWidget release. He constructs three triples:

  • Notifications - is best feature for - MyWidget v2
  • Cold-start scan - is best feature for - MyWidget v2
  • Etherscan badges - is best feature for - MyWidget v2

The next part is the critical part: I want Bob to be able to take some of his own TRUST tokens such that users who stake on ANY of these claims receive “bonus” tokens for staking on any one of them. In essence, Bob is paying users for feedback expressed as Intuition claims. My question is how viable this scheme could be. Users will NOT get “extra” bonus for being on the most-supported vault since we want users to voice their real opinions, and the underlying bonding curves already reward stakers for being on the consensus side.

Edit: it is also worth noting that sponsors would be able to choose WHO to target with the rewards. For example only users with 10+ claims on Intuition, with over 10k veTRUST, or account age > 2 years, etc.

This begs several questions:

Firstly, how does claim sponsorship affect user behavior? If sponsorship rewards multiply with bonding rewards (should it?) then will users be MORE likely to choose the consensus answer vs their own honest opinion? If sponsorship rewards were VERY high then maybe there is a chance some users will stake carelessly to capture the bonus before the window closes… or because they are more eager to be early than to be on the “right” side. Should the bonus be proportional to their stake? Probably. Should there be a cap per-account? Probably. Is there a “sweet spot” for getting good feedback?

Secondly, considering many claims are permanent, how will these claims affect and interact with the wider network? How will claim sponsorship affect the DURATION of staking on said claim? Ideally we want claims that increase the value of the network, so how likely is this structure to help in this regard?

I know some people here have studied game theory for Intuition claims but adding sponsorship funds on top of it is likely to affect outcomes and conclusion. Some more questions:

  1. Which kinds of feedback / polls does this work best for? Simple support/oppose? Multiple-choice?
  2. Would there have to be a deadline? What happens to unspent sponsorship funds after a hypothetical deadline?
  3. How much of this should be on the application layer vs smart contracts? I assume any smart contract would have to be built ON TOP of the multivault contract.
  4. How should results get displayed? Should sponsored claims always have a label on them? How much of the sponsorship details will be on-chain?

I think a lot of people in the community have already thought about sponsored claims of some sort and I figured it was time for us to discuss the topic in more detail so that we can consider whether it’s worth implementing.

1 Like
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Great ideas - personally need to think a bit more to address 1., 2., and 4., since they are more product-level decisions & quite subjective, without an ‘objective’ answer…

For #3 with respect to implementation → yes, would build this on TOP of the multivault; feels like it could be very simple to implement → could just do a snapshot of the [stakers] and [position amount] at a [point in time], and distribute some [bounty / reward pot] to them.

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This is a very good and interesting thread to open. Communities naturally form target audiences, and Intuition already has the rails for paying them to express opinions.

The central tension is that sponsorship makes staking cheaper. If the reward becomes large enough to offset fees, capital costs, and position risk, users are incentivized to farm every option rather than express genuine conviction. The reward therefore needs caps and careful calibration.

I’d also be cautious with the reliance on stake-proportional rewards. The bonding curve already rewards consensus, while proportional sponsorship further favors the largest holders. If the goal is representative sentiment, a flat or concave reward per eligible participant (ideally with strong sybil-resistant eligibility) seems better. Proportional rewards make more sense if the goal is measuring economic conviction.

Permanence is especially important. Sponsored activity will outlive the campaign and could later appear organic. Sponsorship should therefore be represented as queryable on-chain campaign metadata tied to the relevant triples, so UIs and integrators can distinguish subsidized from organic signal.

An example implementation can sit cleanly on top of MultiVault: an escrow holds the sponsor’s TRUST, defines eligible claims, participants, reward rules, and a deadline, then settles from observed positions. I would avoid relying solely on a known point-in-time snapshot, since users could enter immediately beforehand; a minimum holding period or time-weighted position would be harder to game. Off-chain eligibility committed through a Merkle root is probably a reasonable MVP. Unspent funds should return to the sponsor.

The broader opportunity is compelling: this creates TRUST demand from projects buying useful data, rather than only from users seeking exposure. That seems worth exploring.

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