Blockchain will restore trust in information

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Prediction markets are one of the most interesting applications of blockchain technology today, with betting volume exceeding $3.1 billion in the third quarter of this year, and this is no coincidence. Widely regarded as crypto’s first ‘perfect application’, leading prediction market platform Polymarket has done what few other blockchain applications have done: captured mainstream attention and influenced major events, accounting for 99% of the prediction market share. Take the 2024 US elections, for example. Polymarket reached American households through mainstream media, moved beyond crypto-native circles, and demonstrated how blockchain could fundamentally change the way we interact with information.

But the thing is, prediction markets are just one part of a much more important shift: the evolution in generating and verifying information. And this isn’t just a minor improvement; It’s a transformation that takes the proven success of crowdsourcing platforms like Wikipedia and Reddit to the next level.

The rise and fall of crowdsourcing platforms

Wikipedia and Reddit were groundbreaking; By innovating in the early 2000s, they revolutionized the way collective wisdom was harnessed. Wikipedia’s open editing model has created a global hub of knowledge, leveraging diverse knowledge contributions to create a widely trusted resource. Reddit has given rise to a public discourse where upvotes and downvotes represent the community’s consensus about what content is valuable and trustworthy. These platforms have democratized access to information and opinions in a way that centralized media could never do.

But their flaws cannot be ignored. No matter how successful these platforms were, they fell short at critical points. For all its strengths, Wikipedia has struggled to maintain its neutrality; Content wars and biased edits are inevitable in an open editing system, where a relatively small group of editors ultimately approve changes and allow the community to trust their impartiality. Despite the promise of democratized views, Reddit often unintentionally encourages clickbait or sensationalism, favoring vote-drawing content over truth. While these two platforms are just one example among many crowdsourcing platforms, they remain vulnerable to manipulation through misinformation, organized teams, or groupthink, even as they remain widely used.

This is where blockchain comes into play, and this evolution is not optional but essential.

Blockchain is the next step in crowdsourcing

Blockchain provides solutions to problems such as trust, accuracy and sustainability that have long plagued crowdsourcing platforms. These platforms are built on the premise of collective wisdom, but without the right protocols in place there is always a crack through which misinformation and neutrality can escape. This is no different from current problems seen in legacy media; Here even the best intentions can be foiled if the systems that support them are flawed. What blockchain offers is the missing piece: transparency, accountability, and an incentive system for truth rather than popularity.

Every edit, vote or contribution is immutably recorded, making it impossible to manipulate the system in the shadows. The evidence provided by the unique human protocols enabled by the transparency blockchain can fundamentally change the dynamics of accountability and trust in a way that open regulatory systems have always struggled with. These protocols introduce a radical level of transparency that fundamentally changes the dynamics of trust by making it impossible to create large numbers of accounts to manipulate results so that one can trust the integrity of the information because it has not been tampered with.

As we saw with Polymarket, prediction markets offer a solution to what Reddit’s voting system fails to provide: rewarding truth, not popularity. In the case of Reddit, the upvote system allowed the community to surface particularly popular content; So popularity is not synonymous with reality. The system is relatively easy to game; Clickbait headlines often appear at the top if they are misleading or inaccurate. Prediction markets force participants to bet on what is true. If you do it right you will be rewarded; Get it wrong and you lose. Accuracy, not attention, becomes the determining factor in this market-driven approach, creating a self-regulating system that prioritizes verifiable truth.

Blockchain also offers a solution to journalism’s broken financial model. Traditional crowdsourcing platforms struggle to create sustainable financial models that do not compromise on quality. Blockchain introduces decentralized financing models such as second-order financing; This way, the community decides what content should receive funding, not advertisers or corporate interests. The result is a self-sustaining system in which high-quality journalism can thrive, free from the pressures of paywalls or ad-driven content. Information is not just a product; it is a public good and must remain accessible and free; blockchain can help achieve this.

Beyond just information, Blockchain also decentralizes ideas. Prediction markets allow the crowd to determine which journalism or research carries weight, rather than leaving public discourse in the hands of corporate media and a few influential voices. People don’t just consume news; They stake their reputations and money on what they believe is right. Over time, the crowd validates what is right, creating a decentralized system that makes it much harder for bad actors to manipulate public opinion.

Most importantly, blockchain brings accountability that is sorely lacking in traditional crowdsourcing platforms. On crowdsourcing platforms, users can contribute anonymously or without real consequences. This allows trolls, bots or bad actors to disrupt the system. Blockchain solves this problem by ensuring that every decision a person makes is fully auditable. There is a clear chain of responsibility and users are held accountable for their actions. There is no need to hide behind anonymity anymore; Blockchain ensures that contributors remain true to the integrity of the information they support.

Crowdsourcing and the future of blockchain

The truth is that crowdsourcing platforms as we know them are outdated. Wikipedia and Reddit were revolutionary for their time, but they cannot solve the trust, bias, and financial sustainability problems we face today. Blockchain is not just the next step, it is a necessary evolution.

In the future, crowdsourcing platforms will not just be places to gather information; They will be active marketplaces where quality, accuracy and value are determined by users, not central gatekeepers. Decentralized financing models such as blockchain, prediction markets, and second-order financing are already building this future. These tools are not optional add-ons; They are the foundation of a decentralized, transparent internet where unbiased, high-quality journalism and research thrive.

So the question is no longer if blockchain will bring the next evolution, but when.

Ciaran Murray

Ciarán Murray, a seasoned veteran of the blockchain industry, is the founder of Olas, a publishing protocol that creates a decentralized media platform. In addition to advising on numerous blockchain projects over the years and publishing a proof of concept of synthetic assets last year, Ciarán previously worked in the media industry for British Sky Broadcasting. He is well positioned not only to understand the issues facing the media industry, but also how to apply blockchain and other distributed technologies to solve them.