Kleros: The Court System for The Digital World

For the digitized global market, there is a demand for a reliable system to arbitrate the disputes. Kleros provides this system in the shape of a secure and trustworthy decentralized court system to resolve issues within global digitized platforms.

Background8

Thomas Schelling created a model in the area of game theory called Schelling Point, also named Focal Point. People have a tendency to utilize this model of game theory so they can synchronize their activities when they are not able to contact each other. The founder of Ethereum, Vitaik Buterin offered to develop SchellingCoin. This system involves coin holders to mark their ballots for a poll and they align these voters according to their honesty. This system uses incentives for honest votes against losing coins for dishonest votes. Schelling Point is the system for strangers, to show true morality and build up a reliable system. Schelling Point is in use within the prediction markets and oracles. The voting consistently brings out a desirable action out of everyone because of incentives.
Kleros has been designed with a modified Schelling Point. It uses the SchellingCoin kind of system for the agents assigned as jurors to vote for disputes that occur in blockchain-based platforms. Schelling Point has been altered to cater to the particular issues of partiality, security, scaling, and confidentiality within the diverse platformshttps://kleros.io/en/ to let the agents decide without bias.

A Use Case

To understand how Kleros would solve a dispute, a model case is described here:
Amy is a business owner in London. She uses a peer-to-peer freelancing network to hire a programmer named John. John is a qualified programmer working remotely from New York. Amy needs John to design and develop a website and application for her company. They settle on some terms and conditions, work on their payment system and then John starts working on the project. When the website has been launched for her company, Amy complains that the website is not designed according to terms and is of low-quality according to the contract. But John argues that he worked on what was agreed upon. Amy is bothered because she couldn’t possibly get a lawyer to solve this little issue with a person, working from a different part of the world.

This is where Kleros comes in. If there was a condition in the agreed contract that said that if there was a dispute, Kleros court would be consulted for resolution, then Amy would have a way out. John would most probably stop communicating with her to save himself from the hassle. Then Amy can fill a form and submit to Kleros for resolution. Kleros is a transparent and decentralized network, so everyone involved would not know each other.

Kleros court hires people who have experience in HTML, JavaScript, website design, cryptocurrency, cybercrime, and laws regarding the various fields of e-commerce, freelancing, transportation, and many others. So, Amy’s case would probably be sent to a few different jurors of the Website Quality sub-court, with a deadline. For John and Amy’s case, it is sent to randomly chosen Alexandra, Bob, and Chen from different parts of the world. Each of them had staked coins in that particular sub-court. Individually they inspect the clues and the contract meticulously and then vote, as illustrated in the Schelling Point system. The majority of votes would win. It can be John who wins the case as his product was according to the agreement and price.