But if the feed just provides sub-optimal data, or even starts providing outright lies, how does the scheme incentivize people to get back on the right track? It feels like once we're all pulling from Feed X, anybody who tries to deviate from Feed X is going to get spanked, even if Feed X is now full of shit.
I haven't read the whitepaper yet, so I'm pulling this out of my butt, but...what if we made a contract that said, "On February 20th, Feed Y will be more trustworthy than Feed X," where Feed X is the incumbent feed that you feel has been giving bad data?
What if there are 3 feed services and contracts were settled based on the feeds' majority opinion?
What if there were 10 services and contracts are settled on a supermajority of 80% of feeds? Otherwise, if you don't have 80% agreement, then the contract is a draw?
Like I said I haven't thought this through much. Maybe it's best to just dismiss my ideas.
I applaud your creativity, but who is deciding the outcome of "On February 20th, Feed Y will be more trustworthy than Feed X,"? Presumably people would compare Feed X and Y to what-they-decided-to-use, which is probably just another corruptible feed.
I actually think this simple idea could be very useful though. If we say "Feed X to be 'accurate' through the month of March 2014?", we can at least audit a continuous feed. But what if the feed is mostly correct, with one wrong value out of 1000, or one missing/censored value. Is the whole feed wrong?