Experiment Preview: Cursive Connections
Unlocking meaningful connection through programmable cryptography
Note: please re-register with Cursive if you already registered before the opening ceremony, the app has been updated!
Cursive Connections is an app experience enabling all Edge City Lanna residents to tap into serendipity. On day 1, attendees will be able to:
Share socials: Add contact info to easily share with others when they tap your NFC wristband, building a private social graph
Discover overlap: Add interests and goals to see what you have in common with residents without revealing anything else, serving as an easy icebreaker
Over the next few weeks, the Cursive team will be adding new experimental features powered by programmable cryptography to facilitate new forms of human connection:
Digital pheromones: Discover high-quality & serendipitous connections, opportunities, and events by matching on private signals from residents!
Narrowcasting: Instead of broadcasting information in the community-wide telegram, get info to only the most relevant people by setting private filters!
How to get started
Upon checking-in, you will receive an NFC wristband that will be required to enter the different Edge City venues. Setting up an account just requires tapping the wristband with your phone! Hold your phone against the white plastic for ~1s — near the top if it’s an iPhone, and near the middle if it’s an Android. Make sure NFC is on & airplane mode is off. If it’s still not working, refer to this document.
Then, sign in with the email you used for your Edge City ticket & set up your socials and some basic information about your interests & goals for the month. And when you meet other attendees, you can tap their wristbands to quickly get their contact information and discover common interests & events to initiate conversation.
FAQ
How is privacy maintained?
All of your profile data is private to you — our server only stores an encrypted backup in case you get logged out. And you have full control over what data (if any!) that you reveal upon someone tapping your wristband.
Discovering commonalities with others uses a technique called private set intersection, where only data in common is surfaced without revealing any other information. This enables a safe icebreaker where you won’t reveal anything you’d get judged for — it’s only stuff you both like!
Promoting/discovering events & opportunities uses multi-party computation, which enables checking compatibility between multiple parties without revealing anything else about the underlying data. Using hiring as an example, two parties can check if the salary requirements & offers are compatible without revealing any specific numbers!
What personal data will the app have?
Upon registration, Edge City pulls whatever limited data from your application that you marked as “willing to share”. Otherwise, you are free to give as much or as little data as you please!
Over the next few weeks, Cursive will allow users to self-attest to more personal data, and import data from other apps like Spotify/Strava/emails/etc.
The more data you custody, the higher quality your recommended connections will be + the more commonalities you’ll be able to discover with new connections! This will all be stored client-side and will be private to you.
