The internet has been unable to solve the problem of truth.
Fountain is a decentralised protocol for finding consensus on truth.
You can use Fountain to fact-check news, and to incentivise discovery, research and sharing of any knowledge. It is a tool to challenge misinformation.
Anyone can submit claims to the Fountain for fact-checking.
Our mission is to accelerate the search for truth.
The human effort to build knowledge will be decentralised and accessible to all.
The users of Fountain select an answer using an incentivised staking process described in the Whitepaper. The outcome of this process is accepted as a consensus of what the users of the network believe. Importantly, you shouldn't just blindly believe this as unquestionable. You should make up your own mind. This is why its so important that the evidence and reasoning is published as part of the process.
There are currently no fees for using Fountain, except for the gas costs of Optimistic Ethereum. The fee rate is currently set to 0% with the intention of setting it in the future in order to fund costs of the project and other related public goods.
Having these incentives is good because it means users have something at stake. This motivates good behaviour, punishes bad behaviour, and incentivises users to reach a truthful consensus.
If users were allowed to vote without "putting their money with their mouth is", then the system could be easily manipulated.
Polls can't be relied on to determine truth because there's no penalty for being wrong. It is also possible that the majority is wrong. With an token system, users have value at stake which incentivises careful thought and honest behaviour. It also takes into account the varying levels of confidence in belief.
There is currently no Fountain token.
Blockchain provides a decentralised and transparent mechanism to define an incentivised voting mechanism. This is done using an Ethereum smart contract.
The Fountain protocol is designed to rate claims on a factual basis. We want to reach consensus on facts rather than judgements of intent, as knowledge of intent can often be difficult or impossible to prove.