• Corpus ID: 245385100

Collectives: Compositional protocols for contributions and returns

@inproceedings{Niu2021CollectivesCP,
  title={Collectives: Compositional protocols for contributions and returns},
  author={Nelson Niu and David I. Spivak},
  year={2021}
}

• Nelson Niu, David I. Spivak
• Published 21 December 2021
• Computer Science

We introduce a concept called a collective: an interface with a protocol for aggregating contributions and distributing returns. Through such a protocol, many members may participate in a mutual endeavor.1 Here is one such collective: each member contributes an amount of money, and these are pooled into a single investment; then a return on this investment is divided among the members in a manner proportionate to their contributions. For example, if three members contribute $2, $3, and $5, and the return is $20, it would be distributed back to the members as $4, $6, and $10. In general, a collective constitutes how contributions are aggregated and how returns are accordingly distributed. The above simple case generalizes in many ways: the sort of thing members can contribute—time, work, ideas, resources, etc.—as well as the way these contributions are aggregated and returns distributed can be accordingly rich. The world of collectives is meant to be explored through real-world needs. We will now give the definition of collective, though we caution that there are several equations that may be difficult to parse and intuit at first. Do not fear: the rest of the paper is designed to explain and explore how collectives work in a variety of examples, as well as provide some theory for building new collectives from old. Let’s dive in.