INTRODUCTION

The Oxford’s dictionary defines dispute as “an argument or a disagreement between two people, groups or countries; also as a discussion about a subject where there is a disagreement.”

It is safe to say that disputes happen all the time on a daily basis, ranging from conflicting ideas in ones place of work, an example being the case of Lisa, the Chief of Operations, for a computing firm who assigns a task to one of her employee but having to come back the next day to find out that he’s done a different thing entirely and upon query presents his own method as the best plausible way to solving a marketing target; to the schooling environment where two best friends are not on speaking terms because one party who has a crush on the others boyfriend went ahead to reveal debilitating information about the other that was supposed to be a secret…lol; down to the home setting where a mom and dad are having a row with their plumber because he’s overcharging them for fixing their leaking pipes which they are refusing to pay.

THE PROBLEM

Disputes cuts across all sectors of life, involving decisions, land, contracts and others of that sort and like the popular method of dispute resolution, most of these cases are resolved in a Court of Law amongst other existing dispute resolution methods. In the African setting, a Council of Elders may be called upon to settle these disputes. Now considering the fact that most of these disputes are of a miniature nature, it won’t be sensible to go to court to settle considering that a higher fee than what originally caused the debt, would be incurred.

But then again, does that leave the poor mom and dad at the mercy of the greedy plumber? How would they settle this problem without paying more fees in a Courtroom nor paying the plumbers exorbitant fee?

Well the answer is not far-fetched. What if there is a system on the blockchain that proffers verdicts to case like this by connecting the parties in dispute to experts in the field of that particular dispute, well permit me to reveal your thoughts. Great!! Isn’t it? Introducing Kleros, the Blockchain Dispute Resolution Platform.

LOOK, IT’S THE DIGITAL COURT: KLEROS

Yes, that’s right! Its Kleros and its here to provide fast, secure and affordable arbitration for any possible dispute on behalf of its users.

Kleros is a decentralized application built on top of Ethereum that works as a decentralized third party to arbitrate disputes in every kind of contract, from very simple to highly complex ones. It relies on game theoretic incentives to have jurors rule cases correctly. The result is a
dispute resolution system that renders ultimate judgments in a fast, inexpensive, reliable and decentralized way.

Kleros Whitepaper, pg. 1

In this fast growing blockchain ecosystem, having the looks of topping more than half the world’s SMTs, it is only natural that in one or two case, maybe more, disputes might arise and hence the need for a means of putting an end to such dispute. Kleros comes to aid smart contracts since they’re smart as regarding programs’ execution and not when it comes to making judgements and decisions per say. Kleros is an opt-in platform that acts as a third-party howbeit decentralized, so as to render services to its users by exemplifying a court nature of utilizing a Jury to carry out an observation of the provided Evidence and render a Verdict (outcome)
Citing the aforementioned example of poor mom and dad as a case study, the understanding of how Kleros works is made known to us. Mom and dad got to know about Kleros and feel it would be best to make use of their services. Luckily for them, Mr Plumber is also a user of Kleros.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Arbitrated Contracts
With Kleros, poor parents and greedy plumber now have the same arbitrator. The number of jurors both parties require are selected and listed in the smart contract one they opt-in. It is also worth remembering that a court would be chosen as well that is specialized in their particular dispute, in this case freelancing under the e-commerce section of Kleros platform. There are other structures to the court nature of Kleros as shown below.

Options for Jurors
As earlier said under arbitrated contracts, both poor parents and greedy plumber would specify the number of jurors to vote on their case according to the options provided by Kleros. The options could be of the similitude,

• “Reduce the cost of the plumbing job” carried out or “specify the number of periods for payments to be made” options the former being in favor of poor parents while the later in favor of greedy plumber
• “Reimburse poor mom and dad” which transfers funds to their address
• “Pay Plumber” transfers funds to plumbers’ address.

Privacy
During the advent of this dispute settlement, the Kleros court might require sensitive information for progress to be made; in the case of poor mom and dad, their income/salary drafts and bank statements up to a few years back and for Mr. plumber, the company’s’ standard price lists and documents entailing previous jobs amongst others. This is verified by both parties using an asymmetric encryption and made accessible to the jurors when they request of it, knowing their information is kept secure and private.

HOW ARE JURORS SELECTED AND WHAT DOES THE SELECTION PROCESS ENTAIL?

There is a token called Pinakion (PNK) that allows for volunteers to serve as jurors. The number of Pinakion a volunteer deposits dictates if he/she is probable to be picked as a juror. Now the question you might want to ask is, why does Kleros utilize a seemingly unfair method of selecting jurors?

Well the answer to that is, the more Pinakion a juror possesses, the more liable he is to give accountable verdicts because then he is incentivized for voting honestly and debited for making decisions otherwise. No one likes to lose considering how much you have invested. Secondly, this selection process makes sure that inactive jurors are nowhere to be found. How so? I believe we are familiar with the phrase, “things gotten for free are taken for granted!” well so is the case here.

Someone who doesn’t deposit Pinkions in the court system would most likely be subjective in his decision making, having no regard for honesty and justice. He would tend to carry out malicious activities and might even end up in control of the system.
Following token deposition by volunteers, selection of jurors comes next and is carried out randomly.

HOW THEN DO THE JURORS VOTE?

The case of Poor Parents and Mr. Plumber has gotten into the hands of the jury. The jury then go through the evidences provided and pass vote on one of the options available. It would interest you to know that the voting process is designed such that once a juror votes, his vote is made inaccessible to the rest jurors, so while one juror may say Poor parents should be reimbursed, the other jurors won’t know he has picked this option so they too won’t take the initiative and follow after this juror’s vote.
And in the advent a juror wants to publicize its vote, he/she could either reveal only its vote or reveal both its vote and its commitment.

When voting is over, a juror must reveal his vote or be faced with a penalty. Then the votes are aggregated and the option with the highest votes as chosen by the juror wins the case

ARBITRATION FEES

It is worthy of note that the juror settles disputes so as to collect arbitration fees. These are compensations usually determined by a subcourt where the dispute took place, that is paid to a juror for his/her hard work. These compensations/fees are separate from the one entailed in the smart contract and is paid by both Poor Parents and Mr. Plumber. Failure to pay this fee by a party results in a walk-over victory in favor of the party who paid. Also, when both parties pay, the party that wins the case has his fee returned to him while the one who lost has his fee given to the jurors (arbitration fees).

APPEALS

As it is in arbitration fees, both parties, Poor Parent and Mr. Plumber have to pay a stipulated fee but the party who makes the appeal pays more for his appeal to be considered.
Say Mr. Plumber isn’t satisfied with the outcome of the jury’s decision and wants to appeal having lost the case, he has to pay a fee. This is to prevent irrelevant appeals and time wasting that might occur if the appeal is of no meaning; but it is returned to the appellant (Mr. Plumber) if it is found legit.

INCENTIVE SYSTEM

Kleros makes use of an honest and fair incentive system. How so, jurors lose or gain depending on the outcome of their votes. Vote right and get incentives; vote wrongly and have some of your tokens given to the jurors who have voted rightly. This system of redistribution is inspired by the SchellingCoin as seen in Kleros whitepaper.

The Schelling Coin uses this principle to provide incentives to a number of agents who do not know or trust each other to tell the truth. We expect agents to vote the true answer because they expect others to vote the true answer, because they expect others to vote for the true answer. . . In this simple case, the Schelling Point is honesty.

Kleros Whitepaper. Pg. 2

SO WHAT ARE THE BENFITS OF KLEROS

• Fair distribution of tokens.
• Bribe resistance, possible through the appeal option.
• Availability of field experts pertaining to different contracts.
• Security of private information.
• Jurors have incentives for voting rightly.
• Honesty is made paramount.

WHERE CAN KLEROS BE APPLIED?

• Escrow; to pay for off-chain goods and services.
• Micro tasking; such as the Amazon Mechanical Turk.
• Insurance.
• Oracle; decentralized data feed used by smart contracts.
• Curated lists.
• Social Networks: preventing spamming and scams.

MATTER CONCLUDED

Kleros will enable justice through arbitration of a large number of contracts that may be quite expensive if taken to a NYC Judicial Court as Poor Parents were contemplating until coming to know of Kleros. Now they can attain the justice they desire for their small transaction case with Mr. Plumber. Kleros also is not left out for small scale transactions or disputes. Applications from large financial, transport and international trade centers are also handled by experts in each respective fields as Kleros provides.

For more information on how Kleros trial version , the Doge trial works, click here. The image below shows the summary of how the Doge tests jurors abilty.

THE KLEROS TEAM

THE KLEROS ADVISORS

KLEROS’ PARTNERS

A video illustration on Kleros tech.

More information & Resources

Kleros Website
Kleros Whitepaper
kleros Medium
Kleros YouTube
Kleros Telegram
Kleros Twitter
Kleros GitHub
Kleros Forum

ALL images are sourced from Kleros materials unless stated otherwise.

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