Last time we shared with you the vision for RADAR — to discover through research, incubate through hackathons and deliver through funding concepts, products and people that help shepherd in better futures, the futures we want to see in the world.

This is a deeply human layer, bringing together an incredible community to spend time, energy and resources in these mechanics, methodologies and to progress projects forward. It’s a multiplayer game.

But today, we’re sharing with you a different facet of our vision: a deeper layer, a technological undercurrent we’re exploring that will continually evolve as we explore, navigate and create the future. This is Single Player RADAR, powering and supercharging our multiplayer ecosystem.

It starts with a few questions…

• What if you could prove you were the first to know something was going to be big? The first to listen to the track, discover the idea, adopt the technology, use the app, buy the token, name the concept?
• What if you could prove you did this consistently? You’ve been there, done that, and literally got the t-shirt again and again?
• What if you could own that proof wherever you went?

In RADAR, we call this idea the Proof of Future: an on-chain record that identifies when members have discovered or adopted trends consistently across culture.

Right now, Proof of Future is just an idea, an element of our larger vision of the RADAR Futures Protocol — a decentralised data layer to map cultural shifts on-chain, and identify the trendmakers who pioneered them using machine learning and community curation.

But we believe it's a powerful idea: an idea that could change everything.

Why do we need Proof of Future?

Time and time again, we see the same problem emerge for those at the forefront of culture: their ideas and innovations are ripped off, repackaged, watered down and sold back to them by corporations and profiteers. We see it across music, fashion, design, dance and tech.

At the same time we know there is an incredible wealth of ideas that never get the spotlight they deserve. Brilliant signals for the future that are overlooked, often from niche or unassuming sources that deserve to be amplified. It’s hard to get noticed — and too often, it's reserved for those with loud voices or blue checks.

Just as many of us are doing the work of discovery — separating signal from noise and aiming to amplify these deserving voices — faceless companies are scraping every tweet, every post, every signal we share without our permission. They crunch the data, and sell it to the highest bidder, extracting knowledge and reaping benefit with no mind to the creators or curators who usher it into the world.

At RADAR, we envision something quite different. In our world, brilliant minds sharing niche signals are championed and heard, and they receive value in turn for the value they create and share.

RADAR is determined to spotlight these voices as we build the future of futures. We’ve spoken before about how we do this through sharing signals, contributing to reports, giving expert interviews and more.

Proof of Future is another piece to our vision of a more abundant and mutual futures economy.

So, what exactly is a Proof of Future?

We imagine Proof of Future in the form of an NFT, a private key to a personal database of your unique discoveries and curated knowledge, allowing you to own and control it.

In its simplest form, your Proof of Future is the data which is collected from your activities; sharing signals, building an archive which showcases your interests, knowledge and early adoption of ideas, products, concepts, people and more. However, combined with machine learning, it becomes a powerful lego for reputation and collective intelligence.

How do web3 solutions come in?

Three core concepts of web3 underscore our conceptualization of Proof of Future:

• Decentralised databases and storage solutions allow you to own your data through private keys and access rights.
• On-chain documentation allows for immutable attribution to ensure that when we look through the history books… we credit you.
• NFTs used to signal reputation can allow members to move across communities and signal what they’re interested in without explicitly expressing it.

Ok, well, what does it do?

We hope that new, delightful, equitable ways of using Proof of Future for positive outcomes emerge as the project materializes and grows, giving it real utility.

Here are a few we imagine:

Curated and targeted collaboration opportunities with products, places, and partnerships that are relevant to you.

• Imagine how Proof of Future could give free access to a museum, because they knew you were authentically and genuinely interested in the artist showing based on your on-chain signals?
• Imagine if a brand gave away free products to Proof of Future holders with  niche interests, like the intersection of gardening wear and streetwear?
• Imagine when paywalls are removed for holders who prove themselves as superusers?

Access to communities, job opportunities and expert interviews inside and outside of the RADAR community

• Imagine being identified as an expert to tap for paid consulting and desirable interviews through your signals history?

• Imagine if RADARs Proof of Future was your passport for joining communities that aligned with your interests?

  Imagine how Proof of Future could vet candidates for roles through alignment of interests and values?

We believe that one of the most exciting opportunities for Proof of Future is actually what happens further into the future — when the signals you’ve discovered and shared come to fruition.

RADAR is currently working on ideas for how tokenomic structures, decentralised databases and machine learning can identify those who spotted the future, and reward them for their role at the forefront with reputation and $SIGNAL.

Soon we’ll dive into the process and theories of how we map trends and identify early  adopters, but for now let’s talk data.

Proof of Future and Data

Remember those personal databases of signals you’re collecting in your Proof of Future NFT? It's all data. Hyperlinks, context, content, people, times, places, references. It can form a detailed data layer of what makes up your knowledge graph.

It’s true that data is scary and often dangerous…but data can also be positive and empowering.

The data of signals which are shared, collected and ultimately represented by the Proof of Future NFT are what power our ability to ‘map trends’ and forecast opportunities —and we believe, enables us to bring better solutions to bear on the world.

So, in concept we want to make this data open. Open doesn’t have to mean ‘public,’ but it does have to mean accessible. The links and discoveries shared, the collective community knowledge graph created — we want these to be abundant, not locked inside a walled garden.

In this process, we need to make sure that data is used responsibly, and that those curating are both protected and valued. In order to do so, we’ll likely explore a combination of anonymized and encrypted data so individual identifiers are removed, and non-commercial licences to protect the curators and their data from falling victim to extractive and one-sided actors.

We’ll also build community governance mechanics that allow the community to decide how and by whom the data is used. As a part of the RADAR community, it belongs to and is managed completely by you.

You own it, you control it, you decide what its future is.

This is our vision of the Proof of Future concept — and a bit of a teaser for the Futures Protocol to come.

We hope that you’re as excited as we are about these first steps into our abundant futures economy. If this is something you want to get involved with building and being part of, apply here.

Love,
RADAR 💜🔮

This is a piece written by Fancy, Instigator at RADAR. Thank you to thinking, inspiration, builds and edits from Harry, Dwayne, Oryzae, Keels, Susi, Kairon.