Blockchain and Tipping Culture
Blockchain and Tipping Culture
Imagine a fictional world where you are a restaurant patron. After finishing your meal, you prepare to tip the server, realizing you might not visit this restaurant again. The amount you tip, whether generous or meager, is known only to this server. In another fictional world, you are a restaurant server. A customer walks in and starts ordering. You know that no matter how well you serve them today, you might not see this customer again, and you can’t be sure if your excellent service will be fairly rewarded with a tip. This is the problem with today’s tipping culture: fair tipping is relatively rare, while unfair tipping can happen anytime, leading to a situation where bad money drives out good.
Traditional tipping culture originated between nobles and their servants, or between the servants of noble friends. This form of tipping was essentially based on repeated interactions within a familiar social circle. Frequent social interactions among nobles, and their familiarity with each other, made tipping not just an economic reward but an important means of maintaining good social relationships. However, with the rapid urbanization process, tipping culture has evolved from repeated interactions among a few people to single transactions among a vast number of unknown people. In this environment, the significance of tipping has become blurred and unpredictable. Even if someone provides excellent service and receives a generous tip, there’s no guarantee they will serve the same customer again, and customers can’t be sure they will encounter the same server. This lack of memory and reputation system makes the relationship between service quality and tipping unstable.
The introduction of blockchain technology offers a new possibility to address this issue. Blockchain can create an open payment and reputation system, where every transaction and service is recorded and transparent. Similar to how the emergence of credit cards and credit records transformed lending behavior, blockchain can encourage long-term trust relationships between service providers and customers by establishing an open reputation record.
With blockchain, every tipping action can be recorded on a decentralized ledger that is immutable and transparent. The reputation of service personnel is determined not just by one or two interactions but by their long-term service records. In this way, excellent service can gain higher recognition and rewards, while poor service can be eliminated by the market.
Returning to our fictional world: In a future where blockchain is widely adopted, when a server meets a customer, the customer’s tipping history distribution will be displayed to the server. The server can then decide how enthusiastically to serve this customer. Similarly, each customer knows that their tipping history is public information, and they are aware of the service ratings of the server they are dealing with. This creates an open honor system, turning one-off interactions into publicly credited engagements with society, enabling the possibility of good money driving out bad.
In this virtual blockchain world, interactions between customers and servers become more transparent and fair, fostering a virtuous cycle of excellent service and fair tipping. The uncertainties and trust issues brought about by urbanization are effectively resolved.