Introduction
See the Glossary if meaning of terms used here is not clear
Rovas is an application of the NEO economic system, in which participants are rewarded for any activity they choose or invent. NEO has two types of rewards. One is monetary, granted for work effort, in the form of currency chron. It is granted when a NEO user-filed work report is approved by two other users. The amount of money paid out is proportional to the time worked and all types of work are rewarded with the same hourly rate. Chrons can be used to pay for goods or services made in NEO, or exchanged for national currencies.
NEO users may also earn a non-monetary, non-transferable merit reward that is a measure of value of the product of labor. The buyers of products and services pay not to the producer, but to Rovas, which converts the paid chrons into merits, one merit for one chron. The chronos paid are subsequently destroyed and the new merits are assigned to the seller. The merit score is thus a reflection of an individual's ability to create socially useful products or services.
Separating the merit reward from the economic reward results in a virtual equality in income, as everyone earns the same hourly wage in chrons. On the other hand, NEO workers remain motivated to produce innovative work, because valuable products - and their creators - are rewarded with unequal amounts of merits that reflect the produced value.
The basic reporting structure
- Every work report filled in Rovas belongs to a project - an entity that represents the good or service produced.
- projects can have none, one, or more work reports. If a project has no work report, the project owner can not be rewarded with chrons. They however still can receive merits, if their project is bought or rewarded,
- the merits earned by a project can be shared by shareholders of a project. The merit allocation schema is set by the project owner, or negotiated among the shareholders,
- shareholders of a project can be individuals, or other projects,
- projects can be public or private. In private projects, only the project owner can add or remove shareholders, and merits can be divided among them according to a fixed share, or by time worked. Public projects are open to anyone and merit allocation is proportional to the project participant's labor time.
What is work
Work in NEO has the following attributes:
- is any activity that has been provably performed. The burden of proof is on the user reporting the work,
- the output of the work is available for free, or can be purchased for chrons,
- the work produces goods or services that are not socially harmful
Please note that the produced work does not have to be useful, as this property might be assigned to a product or a service only in very specific context of a given time, place, or a person making the judgment. For example, works of art, theoretical works of mathematicians, or particular education styles can not be asigned a usefullness value that is valid to all people, times and places.
Reporting work
In order to receive the standard 10 chrons for every hour worked, a person needs to fill a work report in Rovas. The report must contain the following information:
- the date and time the work started,
- the length of time worked,
- the main NACE category the activity falls into,
- a proof that the work reported was actually performed. The proof provided depends on the type of work performed, the most commonly used being a web address and photos or videos showing the status before and after the work is performed.
Rovas has also an API that allows 3rd party applications to submit work reports on the users' behalf.
Verification of reports
After user submits a work report, Rovas selects two other users and sends them an email notification with a request to verify the report. The verifiers then use the evidence included in the report and other information provided by Rovas, to either approve or deny the report. If the two verifiers issue different verdicts, Rovas will designate and invite an additional - third verifier. Upon approval, Rovas will immediately reward the author with chrons. If a user-verifier does not verify a report within 5 days, Rovas penalizes the user and selects another verifier.
Penalties
If a user verifies a request, one point is added to their publicly visible user's Compliance score. If a verifier does not respond to a verification requests, they are penalized by lowering their Compliance score by one point. One Compliance point is also subtracted from a user's score, if the work report they filled is denied. Once the score drops to minus three points, Rovas subtracts ten merits from the user's merit score. If the merit score drops below zero, its owner loses the ability to create work reports and therefore earn chrons. Their ability to create projects however stays, which allows them to earn merits and therefore again file reports and earn chrons, once their merit score rises above zero.
Any work report verification decision can be additionally contested by opening a formal procedure called Dispute. In a dispute, an accuser describes the reason for complaint and asks the accused to remedy the problem. If the accused refuses to do so, both parties accumulate supporters of their position. After three days, Rovas will close the dispute and determine the outcome by calculating the cumulative merit score of each party's users. The party with the most merits wins. The Dispute procedure and penalties are described in more detail on the Disputes page.
Types of work rewarded
In NEO, any activity is rewarded if:
- the activity has been provably performed. This judgement is made by the verifiers, who base their decision mostly on the proof of labor provided by the work report-filing user,
- the work was performed after the user registered in Rovas. Work performed before the user has created an account in Rovas cannot be rewarded,
- the work produces goods or services that are free, or can be purchased with chrons,
- the verifiers believe, that the activity is not in violation of the community values.
Transparency
Almost all information in NEO is freely accessible to its users. Exceptions are personal contact details (email address) and bank account details in currencies other than chron. This means that each user can at any time check the account movements of another user, as well as track how and for what they acquired their chrons and merits. This transparency rule is needed to ensure stability of the NEO economy.
Data Use License
Any data available in Rovas can only be used to create products and services for which there is a project in Rovas. The creators of such projects must add the Rovas project to their project as a shareholder and allocate a share for it, that corresponds to the value the Rovas data provides to the project.