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not a bad idea, but the way to do it is probably to come up with a certain basket and then actually have people physically go into stores and record prices in t

not a bad idea, but the way to do it is probably to come up with a certain basket and then actually have people physically go into stores and record prices in those stores and then reward them with a crypto token for contributing ( kinda like the mystery shopper industry ).

gruez 5y ago
What's preventing people from making up the prices?
- vasilipupkin 5y ago
  you can have them submit it by taking a photo of the price, or even by taking a photo of their receipt after they check out. you can run sanity checks to clean the data, for example, if someone says eggs cost 50 bucks, throw away their submission, etc.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >or even by taking a photo of their receipt after they check out. Sounds like it'll be cheaper to buy the data off one of those receipt scanning apps. Better reach, and you don't need to make your own data acquisition/validation pipeline.
    - vasilipupkin 5y ago
      well, the beauty of paying with crypto token is you pay with the token you yourself minted out of nothing, so initially it costs nothing to use it to pay people and then if enough people make enough submissions to this dashboard and you design token to be useful in some kind of defi like thing, it will go to the moon for the same reason they all do.
- paulgb 5y ago
  This becomes especially important if these oracles become used in smart contracts. As we learned from LIBOR, even the traditional finance industry can't resist the urge to nudge a benchmark in their preferred direction. At least in that case, the parties were not anonymous.
perl4ever 5y ago
>but the way to do it is probably to come up with a certain basket I don't get it. Tell them what to buy? The official figures are based on a basket determined by surveying people. That is the point. It sounds like you are saying the problem with the government CPI is that it's not predetermined? "The Quarterly Interview Survey is designed to collect data on large and recurring expenditures that consumers can be expected to recall for a period of 3 months or longer, such as rent and utilities, and the Diary Survey is designed to collect data on small, frequently purchased items, including most food and clothing. Together, the data from the two surveys cover the complete range of consumers’ expenditures." See https://www.bls.gov/cex/ https://www.bls.gov/cex/

gruez 5y ago

What's preventing people from making up the prices?

vasilipupkin 5y ago
you can have them submit it by taking a photo of the price, or even by taking a photo of their receipt after they check out. you can run sanity checks to clean the data, for example, if someone says eggs cost 50 bucks, throw away their submission, etc.
- gruez 5y ago
  >or even by taking a photo of their receipt after they check out. Sounds like it'll be cheaper to buy the data off one of those receipt scanning apps. Better reach, and you don't need to make your own data acquisition/validation pipeline.
  - vasilipupkin 5y ago
    well, the beauty of paying with crypto token is you pay with the token you yourself minted out of nothing, so initially it costs nothing to use it to pay people and then if enough people make enough submissions to this dashboard and you design token to be useful in some kind of defi like thing, it will go to the moon for the same reason they all do.
paulgb 5y ago
This becomes especially important if these oracles become used in smart contracts. As we learned from LIBOR, even the traditional finance industry can't resist the urge to nudge a benchmark in their preferred direction. At least in that case, the parties were not anonymous.

perl4ever 5y ago

>but the way to do it is probably to come up with a certain basket I don't get it. Tell them what to buy? The official figures are based on a basket determined by surveying people. That is the point. It sounds like you are saying the problem with the government CPI is that it's not predetermined? "The Quarterly Interview Survey is designed to collect data on large and recurring expenditures that consumers can be expected to recall for a period of 3 months or longer, such as rent and utilities, and the Diary Survey is designed to collect data on small, frequently purchased items, including most food and clothing. Together, the data from the two surveys cover the complete range of consumers’ expenditures." See https://www.bls.gov/cex/ https://www.bls.gov/cex/