Sleep 2 Earn is an initiative of gamifying life with Heal 2 Earn:
Sleep 2 Earn
- Track accurately (not merely approximate/estimate) your own sleep with a wearable headband.
- Headband collects raw EEG data → the Proof-of-Sleep.
- EEG data is monetized in Decentralized Finance via data markets such as the Ocean protocol, where liquidity is created by pairing with $OCEAN.
- Liquidity begets liquidity, which permits further transmutations of value into sophisticated instruments - as we’ve seen with “DeFi 2.0” protocols like Olympus, Tokemak, Dopex, Alchemix, and will see in the emerging elastic finance sector with AMPL, Buttonwood, Mooncake, and more to come in the stack (not here to shill/pump my bags; DYOR anon).
- Hence, Sleep 2 Earn presents a new way to passively provide liquidity.
- The average person is unlikely to dive deep into DeFi/Web3; the (cognitive) bandwidth requirement is too high and the learning curve too steep.
- Demand organically emerges to analyze and draw insights from data that was not previously available.
- According to at least one study, up to $680B is lost each year across five OECD countries due to insufficient sleep.
Why does demand organically emerge?
Because tremendous value is created by solving problems.
Incentives
Show me the incentives, and I will tell you the outcomes.
We have a problem.
Unbeknownst to many, a silent enemy is killing us slowly and quietly. This enemy is common to us all, and we must unite against it. You might be tempted to think this is stress, but that umbrella term is reserved for most things intangible and immeasurable. Actually, we’re amid a Sleep Epidemic, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has declared so because sleep deprivation is objectively quantifiable
…or is it?
The Sleep Epidemic
From a survey conducted in 2014, the CDC compiled the following information:
Based on this data, a sizeable portion of people reporting less than 7 hours of sleep also happened to be obese, physically inactive, smokers, and excessive alcohol consumers.
The respondents also happened to suffer from several chronic medical conditions, particularly those who slept less than 7 hours.
The point is:
- A simple survey provided alarming feedback and prompted further investigations.
- There exists a plethora of evidence supporting the associative (chain) links between sleep deprivation and all-cause mortality - death by any reason.
In the United States, most people sleep for less than 6 hours per night. In order to foster well-being, the majority of people need approximately 7 hours of sleep per night. Recommendations vary; e.g., some authorities advise 7-9 hours of sleep per night while others advocate for 8 hours of sleep per night. On the other hand, we all know or have heard of those who can sleep for less than 5-6 hours per night and function unimpaired. Interestingly such anecdotes have been corroborated by genetic mutations, further complicating our understanding of sleep.
To sleep or not to sleep for more than 6 hours? Or 7? Or 8?
Do we even know the truth?
In times of widespread institutional mistrust and the ensuing mainstream media disruption…
…the truth matters.
The reality is,
Sleep is largely ignored in medicine today, and the contemporary assessment of sleep is like monitoring the heart without an Electrocardiogram (ECG/EKG).
Let that sink in.
Imagine if your heart rate were fluttering and it was evaluated based purely on self-report without any measurements…fortunately we don’t have to, because the field of medicine quickly realized that could lead to grave consequences, e.g., arrhythmias can be fatal. So, the behavior was changed in accordance with that feedback. EKGs are conducted routinely for screening purposes as that can be lifesaving.
But what about sleep?
The feedback is not so direct or apparent; the (mis)understanding is that nobody will die immediately if sleep monitoring is delayed/neglected. However, that’s not entirely true because driving while sleep deprived is like driving under the influence of alcohol. Despite the abundance of knowledge and strong sleep hygiene recommendations, no incentives exist to foster healthy sleeping. On the contrary, constant stimulation from electronic devices and instant access to digital media promote the opposite.
Should we care about Sleep? Is it really killing us?
“Insufficient sleep leads to the derailment of body systems, leading to increased incidences of cardiovascular morbidity, increased chances of diabetes mellitus, obesity, derailment of cognitive functions, vehicular accidents, and increased accidents at workplaces” -The Global Problem of Insufficient Sleep and Its Serious Public Health Implications.
To make matters worse, sleep deprivation causally (directionally) compromises immunity and increases susceptibility to COVID-19 and complications.
Furthermore, sleep deprivation contributes to the formation of toxins that are pathognomonic of neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia:
Unless market forces align – yes, market forces guide authorizations by health insurance companies; not clinical judgment - to grant a patient the gold standard polysomnography (PSG), rating scales and sleep hygiene recommendations will have to suffice. E.g., a PSG is unlikely to be authorized unless a patient is suffering from Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), because daytime somnolence resulting from OSA can lead to accidental deaths and negative outcomes for health insurers. The PSG will confirm diagnosis, and treatment (often with a CPAP machine) will be approved by health insurance companies. But absent such edge cases, the healthcare system is not incentivized to offer sleep monitoring for screening and/or potential treatment.
The broader idea here is that gold standard sleep tracking is expensive, cumbersome, and impractical for screening. Instead, we are to rely on self-assessments or wearable devices if one is self-interested about sleep tracking. But this won’t suffice because we humans are generally inaccurate at estimating sleep duration, cannot reliably characterized overnight phenomenon (night terrors, hypnogogic hallucinations, hypnopompic hallucinations, etc.) and may even exhibit Sleep State Misperception. This is simply unacceptable because we spend between a quarter to a third of our lives sleeping!
To summarize, the incentives are many:
- Sleep Epidemic.
- Healthy living is not (willing vs. able) promoted or supported by today’s healthcare infrastructure.
- It is highly encouraging to see the explosive interest in “Decentralized Science,” and the ensuing quest for longevity and immortality.
- As we add more knowledge and information to our understanding of life, let’s remind ourselves that subtraction is also addition → we eliminate our Sleep Debt, along with financial debt for those who have been the subject of usury in the predatory traditional finance system.
- Unknowns about Sleep and unknowable unknowns.
- Too much sleep is also correlated with increased all-cause mortality.
- Public health data at the population level is mainly gathered through surveys or retrospective analyses of electronic health records; correlations at scale can be helpful but they are not robust.
- Robust experiments are conducted in tightly controlled settings; while they offer many insights, they are not always generalizable to real-world conditions.
- Sleep 2 Earn can offer a hybrid solution.
- Barriers to entry into DeFi/Web 3.
- DAOs stand to capture and create tremendous value → Let’s DAO it!
- Relative paucity of public goods in our society today.
- The game has become PvP instead of PvE (capital sloshing around L1s).
Steve Jobs articulates this point very well:
“You have to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.”
Substitute “Apple” for “DAOs” or “Ethereum” in his response.
Outcomes
Show me the incentives, and I will tell you the outcomes.
Transform incentives into outcomes:
- Reverse the Sleep Epidemic.
- Promote healthy living and longevity.
- Incentivize maintenance of order over reversal of disorder.
- Uncover the Truth.
- Decentralized Science → Decentralized Randomized Controlled Trials → are real world insights consistent with results produced in tightly controlled studies?
- Emergence of sleep-based biomarkers/predictors of neurodegenerative conditions → development of health indexes → integration into Web 3 passport?
- Real world use case for Distributed Ledger Technology/Web 3.
- Transform the relationship between labor and capital.
- Should we continue incentivizing menial labor, or personal and public health?
- Simplify signing into Web3 with Ethereum.
- Make passive liquidity provision as simple as using a wearable device that submits on-chain proof-of-X (sleep).
- L222 → Ethereum Endgame.
- Transform the relationship between labor and capital.
“Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep.” – Naval
Health is Wealth. Our time and attention are the scarcest resources we have.