22 Sep 2004

Eve Guardian

 

Like most things supply and demand come into play. The demand for trust is high, the supply of trust is low, it is a sellers market. At a basic level everyone trusts everyone else. This is probably not trust,  ask someone to lend you one lump of trit, if they give it to you, they don’t actually care if you give it back or not. This is not trust, it is simply not caring.

 

Ask them for 1mill isk and now it depends on who you are asking. There are some for whom this amounts to nothing and will hand over 1mill isk not  really caring if it gets returned or not, others will need a high degree of trust in you before they hand over the isk.

 

If you have a high trust rating in people’s minds you can go to 100 people and ask for a 1million isk loan they will hand it over to you if they are able to. If you have a low trust rating you can ask 1000 people to lend you 1 million isk and 1 person might well hand this over.

 

All blindingly obvious.

 

So, you have a rare ship, or you want to run a lottery, and think it would be good fun to raffle the thing, tickets 1million each. Communication channels are opened and the offer is sent out over the airwaves.

 

But you have a low trust rating, instead of smiling faces and isk pouring in, you get shouts of "scammer" and "prove it" and "I don’t care if I am allowed to fly about in this thing free of charge for the next month I still think it will be won by your alt"

 

The result is further depressed ticket sales and unless you give this thing away, and it might be a loss making venture, your trust rating is sunk.

 

Now instead of going it alone you have a trusted third party. It does not matter what the names are it matters that the community trusts them. The ship is handed over to that trusted third party and they conduct the raffle for a percentage of total ticket sales.

 

The result for the original owner is far less problems from the community and in all likelihood a higher profit, they will be using some of the trust the third party has developed and profiting from it.

 

If the market for property sales continues it should also be noted that all this, "you give me 40% and then I give you the lab slot and you give me 60%" type deals can be done away with. The person buying the lab slot gives 100% of the monies (plus whatever commission is considered worthy) to the trusted third party and when the lab slot has changed ownership the fund holder hand over the isk (less the negotiated commission).

 

Yes there are still difficulties to be resolved in property exchanges like this and that is for the people involved to iron out, but it does remove a number of obstacles.

 

Trust is going to become even more important with the Tech2 BPO lottery, it has happened, and it will happen again, that the BPO ends up in the hands of someone that cannot fully exploit the potential of these things in the first vital weeks of it hitting the market.

 

Time and again it has been proven these are the golden days for the BPO and you need to cash in. In effect you need a business partner, one that can fully exploit your BPO for you. You are not going to hand this most valued of asset over to anybody but only the most trusted.

 

So it is time for corporations to consider investing in the "trust asset". It is going to make a lot of isk for the few that can manage it.