"The ledger of record" concept merges distributed ledger technology with traditional "paper of record" journalism to create verifiable, cryptographically-signed data feeds

Balaji announces $100,000 competition for building decentralized inflation dashboard, plus additional $100,000 Chainlink grant for implementations using their oracles

"Fiat information" relies on centralized authority assertions, while "crypto information" uses on-chain data with cryptographic verification of who, what, and when

COVID-19 misinformation demonstrated failures across research, reporting, and regulation—the entire information supply chain from academia to media to policy

Bitcoin blockchain protects data integrity through three mechanisms: digital signatures (who), mining consensus (what), and timestamps (when)

Inflation measurement serves as ideal first application because crypto community is culturally prepared, it's purely price-based data, and proves value of multiple crypto narratives simultaneously

This presentation features Balaji Srinivasan, entrepreneur and technologist, discussing his concept of the "ledger of record" and announcing a major competition to measure inflation using blockchain technology.

Balaji introduces the transition from "argument from authority" where centralized institutions determine truth, to "argument from cryptography" where data verification is cryptographically provable—summarized as "BTC over NYT."

The talk covers three main areas: diagnosing how the information supply chain is broken (using COVID-19 as a case study), introducing the ledger of record concept that separates facts from narrative, and announcing a $100,000 competition plus $100,000 Chainlink grant for building decentralized inflation dashboards.

Balaji frames inflation measurement as the perfect first application of crypto information infrastructure, arguing it will prove valuable to Bitcoin holders, Ethereum developers, oracle providers, and stablecoin projects simultaneously.

COVID-19 exposed systemic failures across research, reporting, and regulation. "Chinese government said there was no evidence of human to human transmission," surgeon general told people not to buy masks, and media outlets mocked precautionary measures.

"Bad feeds can kill us" - Balaji emphasizes misinformation wasn't just wrong but "very arrogantly and condescendingly wrong in a dangerous way that literally did lead to people dying."

Social media feeds show what is popular, not what is true. The challenge is building a better information supply chain rather than simply rejecting all existing information sources.

Data integrity was fundamental problem: "China withheld data on coronavirus from WHO." Garbage in, garbage out—trillion-dollar economic and life-threatening public health decisions require extreme auditing of data provenance.

Many articles are "wrappers around numbers"—sports articles wrap box scores, financial articles wrap ticker symbols, political articles increasingly wrap tweets. Articles are superimposed on underlying data structures.

Bitcoin blockchain demonstrates how to create a better feed with cryptographic integrity checks. Digital signatures protect "who," mining algorithm protects "what," and timestamps protect "when."

Crypto oracles generalize blockchain concept: "An off-chain entity that writes cryptographically signed assertions about arbitrary data to a blockchain." Currently used mainly for price feeds but can handle sensor data, policy decisions, and arbitrary internet data.

Price feeds are ideal starting point because they're "perhaps the most valuable kind of information to manipulate." If oracle problem can be solved for price data with strong corruption incentives, it can be solved for other data types.

Vision is transitioning from posting online to posting anything important on-chain. "That information you're putting on chain becomes a possibly monetizable crypto oracle" for both humans and machines.

Ledger of record separates facts (metadata), assertions (data), and narrative (story layer). Facts are verifiable on-chain events, assertions are claims with cryptographic signatures, narratives are human or machine-written stories built on top.

"Oracles and advocates" model factors information ecosystem: oracles provide cryptographically-checked data, advocates write narratives based on on-chain information. Both humans and machines can serve as advocates.

Each new proof type (proof of location, proof of solvency, etc.) expands the ledger of record's scope, enabling new classes of verifiable reporting and research beyond basic who/what/when.

Fiat information pipeline relies on centralized prestige: "This guy from a prestige institution says so" repeated across research, reporting, and regulation without verification.

Crypto information replaces all three stack levels: research becomes on-chain data and code (reproducible research with code and data on-chain), reporting uses on-chain data by pseudonymous influencers, regulation comes from multiple competing governments.

Willy Woo exemplifies new reporting model: analyst uses on-chain Bitcoin data for reports that are independently verifiable. "You don't have to trust him as an advocate, you can go to the raw oracle" and check multiple block explorers or clone the blockchain yourself.

On-chain data is "censorship resistant, published pseudonymously, globally accessible, free, incorruptible." Raw data quality improvement at base level fundamentally changes what's possible in reporting.

Wyoming demonstrates regulatory competition: state was "smart enough on Ethereum and crypto and Bitcoin to have DAO legislation." Some governments will recognize crypto information supply chain superiority.

Reproducible research means releasing not just papers but "the code and the data required to regenerate that paper." True reproducibility puts everything on-chain, with crypto oracles as version 1.0.

"Official misinformation on COVID has already happened, but official misinformation on inflation has begun." Media progression: May 2021 "inflation scare doesn't match reality," months later "inflation's happening but it's only temporary."

Balaji announces $100,000 competition at 1729.com/inflation for building decentralized inflation dashboard. Chainlink offers additional $100,000 grant in LINK tokens for implementations using Chainlink oracles.

Inflation measurement "proves everybody right" across crypto: Bitcoin holders validated on inflation concerns, Ethereum community needed for smart contracts to calculate inflation, Chainlink required for oracle infrastructure, potential path to stablecoins.

Dashboard would be "refreshed a million times per day" and applicable globally, not just US or China. "People in Venezuela would look at" it—could become "the next CoinMarketCap, the next DeFi Pulse."

Competition runs for 90 days with detailed technical considerations in nearly 3,000-word post covering data scraping challenges, merchant partnerships, and working with crypto-native merchants.

Data collection approaches: scraping basket of goods has challenges (merchants use anti-scraping walls), partnering with companies for data downloads, or working with crypto merchants selling VPNs and digital goods who are "very friendly to the concept."

Good dashboard would allow parameterized personal baskets: users input "I drive, I buy oranges, I use computers" to see if their specific consumption bundle is inflating or deflating.

Prediction: "Physical inflation, digital flatness or even digital deflation" because marginal cost of digital delivery is low while physical goods like lumber face real scarcity. This will "push people towards much less physical consumption."

Information asymmetry problem extends far beyond COVID. Balaji references The Gray Lady Winked by Israeli journalist documenting New York Times errors: reporting Poland invaded Germany in WWII, covering up Ukrainian famine, misleading Castro coverage, claiming rockets and Wright Brothers flight were impossible.

MIT's Billion Prices Project serves as inspiration—scraped billion prices from web as "shadow statistics alternative to the CPI." In 2021, crypto community should be able to improve on government Consumer Price Index.

"Low IQ way" and "high IQ way" both valid: simple approach is not trusting stats and buying Bitcoin for protection; sophisticated approach is not trusting stats, buying Bitcoin, and creating better statistics.

Success with inflation could extend to "arbitrary corporate or financial stats." If community can "nail the inflation number better than the state," can probably handle revenue numbers, accounting, and other financial data on-chain.

Local journalism decline creates information gaps, but inflation's global scale and massive dataset make it ideal starting point. Health data or genomics would be "too much of a reach for the community at this point."

Key requirement is "one pretty good provider" of privacy-preserving data—could be merchant data aggregator, anonymized transaction data from PayPal or banks, or any source providing time series of representative goods basket.