Varying Compensation Between Contributors

When you don't have the option of top-down, go bottom-up!

In an aftok, there is no central authority whatsoever - not even an authority empowered by democratic means. Fortunately, no central authority is required to make decisions about how to adjust compensation - each individual can "vote" directly by reallocating some of their own base share of revenue to other participants.

In a traditional corporation, employees agree implicitly to reallocation of this sort. Some people get paid highly and others poorly, even though they may all be spending similar fractions of their life working toward the good of the overall goal. Even for those who are relatively poorly paid for their time, this might be considered be an acceptable outcome if the value generated by their coworkers is sufficient to provide them with an income adequate to their needs.

While such a result might be acceptable if such an agreement were entered into voluntarily, the truth of the matter is that significant discrepancies in compensation are the product of a dynamic where compensation information is kept secret in order to provide employers with greater leverage over their employees, and compensation reflects the bargaining skills of the employee more than it does the value that they bring. For a non-coercive organization, this is not an acceptable result.

In an aftok, it is up to the individual to decide exactly how much of the "surplus value" of their own time spent that they wish to allocate as rewards or thanks to their fellow contributors. Such allocation is called tithing.

How tithes work

Contributors can use the tithes interface to perform the following kinds of allocations:

• A contributor may log time to the account of another contributor. Such a contribution is irrevocable outside of the log amendment exclusion period — it is as though the beneficiary had personally logged that amount of time.

• A contributor may log time with a bare zcash shielded address as the beneficiary. When the logged interval is included in a billing calculation, the fractional share of the billed amount that it represents will be sent directly to the specified address. This election is irrevocable outside the log amendment exclusion period. An interface is provided that can permit someone who controls the keys controlling the shielded address to permanently "forward" payments to a different address.

• A contributor may log time with a different aftok project as the beneficiary. When the logged interval is included in a billing calculation, the fractional share of the billed amount that it represents will be appropriately divided among all of the members of the specified project, according to their relative contributions to that project. This election is also irrevocable outside the amendment exclusion period.

• A contributor may specify a recurring direct allocation of a fraction of their revenue to another entity: either another contributor, a project, or a bare zcash shielded address. When the logged interval is included in a billing calculation, the specified fraction of the contributor's share of revenue will be reallocated to the specified entity. Such elections are revocable at any time.

• A contributor may specify a one-time direct allocation of a specific amount of revenue to another contributor, a project, or a bare zcash shielded address. On each billing event, the contributor's full share is redirected to the beneficiary until the total amount specified has been paid out. Such an election may be canceled at any time, though amounts paid out prior to cancellation are not refundable.

For the health of the cryptocurrency network, all payments of amounts that would fall below a system-wide dust threshold are excluded from the resulting bill. This may result in a (very small) discount to the purchaser.

Next up: read about our collaborative decision-making tools.