Socioeconomic Implications of Self-Sovereign NFTs Beyond Rejuve

The Product NFT/Data NFT combination is an innovation because it tracks the non-fungible labor put into a product. It applies not only to Rejuve or healthcare but any product in the modern technical economy. It affirms the idea that the blockchain can redefine the relation of workers to one another so that they can fulfill their potential, so that their abilities are known, invested in, and justly compensated for. The idea that labor is unique, creative, and non-fungible is built into the system itself. It sees a modern product as composed of all the data put into it, and keeps a permanent record of what data went into it, to fairly assign credit in a data economy. This includes all kinds of work: from giving blood to creative intellectual contributions, and supports the idea of forever owning our contributions rather than being disinherited by systems that exploit our labor. It allows a limited amount of arbitrage so that investment can be sent back to early stages in the supply chain. The permanent record of what employees have done is like a set of resumes that are useful to future tasking and compensation, especially as AIs improve in their ability to trace the value of contributions, including intellectual contributions, to the result of an end product. It gives a recourse for people who are denied just compensation on the basis of their demographic characteristics. Its faculty for measuring contribution can keep account of unjust compensation, for example by measuring the fairness of companies that compensate a CEO over 300 times the average salary. This newly transparent information can then be given to consumers and used in systems that allow them to indicate preferences for products that are exploitation-free. When contribution is permanently tracked, just remuneration is possible, and exploitation is reduced. When people know they own their ideas and will be rewarded for them, those ideas will flow more freely. With assurances that they will eventually be compensated, they can invest in their own creative contributions before those contributions are recognized or yield pay. Entrepreneurs who see potential early can invest in individuals rather than companies, by purchasing individual’s Product NFT shards. AIs can help talented individuals be found and invested in regardless of their demographic characteristics, and of course companies would benefit from identifying those individuals as well. Individuals can then become more autonomous, with more freedom to move into situations with fairer compensation because their contributions are more measurable. Keeping track of value added is relevant for controlling prices in healthcare as well. For example, pharmaceutical companies couldn’t charge higher prices without justifying them with research contributions, as these would be made transparent to consumers, and integrated with a system of consumer choice in the healthcare marketplace.

Keeping track of the non-fungible contributions of persons that together have created a product is the difference between this design and fungible share divisions, that compensate the data owner once and then forget what that contribution was, making them vulnerable to exploitation. Our NFTs link the RejuveIDs of an individual to data that can only be unlocked with that RejuveID. Thus our NFTs secure ownership as well as a traditional NFT, but is better than a traditional NFT for data that can be reused for many purposes and products (like healthcare data), because it lets the original owner control each reuse of the same data rather than giving away the rights to it forever.

With Rejuve’s Data NFT technology, the owner of the image of Mickey Mouse could grant a permission for a specific mug product and a permission for a specific T-shirt product while holding on to ownership of the image in the form of the NFT. In healthcare, someone can sell their DNA for one product when they are younger and need the money, but still keep it for another product when they are older.

The intellectual property component of healthcare, whether it is within the AI sphere or the intellectual contributions of scientists, is also served by the new business model of the Rejuve Data and Product NFT. With Rejuve’s Self-Sovereign NFTs, AI software creators can be paid for every run of their product within an ensemble of AIs, owning their software but licensing it for each use-case while maintaining ownership rights to make money off their creation in another use-case, rather than selling the rights to corporations up front. Scientists who invent concepts like mRNA vaccines can own their ideas and be paid for them in additional use-cases, in modern employee-owned online organizations made possible through the blockchain.