Free online encyclopedia co-founder Larry Sanger has joined the venture-backed startup firm Everipedia as chief information officer (CIO) in his bid to disrupt the company that he helped establish. Dr. Sanger is also an outspoken critic of Wikipedia, claiming that he doesn't like what the online encyclopedia has become.
During an interview, Dr. Sanger discussed the reasons why he has decided to become an official of Everipedia, which he considers as the next evolution of online encyclopedias. He claimed that the current issue confronting online information is that it is centralized and controlled by a few players and they are about to change that.
"The biggest problem with online information today is that it is centralized and controlled by a very few players, that it benefits to have the most salacious and hype-ridden information. We can do much better."
Decentralized encyclopedia
Based on the unpublished draft of Everipedia’s white paper, the company will utilize Blockchain technology to establish an enhanced Wikipedia. The startup will move the whole process of approving articles, making edits and storing information to the Blockchain-based EOS smart contract platform.
By using the platform to record the editing workflow and store the articles, the Everipedia team claimed that it will create a truly censorship-proof system. The firm also stated that it will provide incentives to contributors with a digital currency token in order to establish a platform for more factual information.
According to Everipedia co-founder and white paper co-author Sam Kazemian, the incentive model is similar to the one provided to miners in Bitcoin mining.
"Just like miners who find blocks get newly minted Bitcoin, these editors who are voted to have a very good state-change proposal get newly minted tokens.”
In addition to the EOS platform, the company will also use the decentralized server model called Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for the storage of more data-heavy files like videos and images.