Rhubarb aims to change the economics of law by removing the high cost of reaching decisions. (High cost = lawyers, courts, and long spans of time to reach settlement.) By developing distributed decision-making mechanisms such as Poll Verdicts, Rhubarb is helping remove the biggest obstacle to getting civil justice: cost.

A Poll Verdict engages the public, including industry experts and ordinary citizens, to help decide the merits of two or more proposed solutions to a problem through voting and reaching a consensus. It can be used in common disputes between businesses and customers, or in larger matters of public interest or controversy. But it’s free to the initiator and counterparty because the process takes place online and costs are relatively low—and the voters themselves cover the expense.

Voters pay a small fee in RHUCoin to participate. The voting option with the largest number of voters becomes the “consensus,” and consensus voters receive the RHUCoin fees of the non-consensus voters as a reward. Voters are motivated to win, to pick the best solution to the case, because the return on cost of participation can be substantial. It’s a great way to accumulate RHUCoin and help resolve real disputes in the process.

Voting categories depend on the kind of case or question under consideration and the preferences of the poll initiator(s). If you don’t see a voting category that fits you when signing up for a poll, it means there will probably be another poll that is looking for someone with your background.

Results are published on the Rhubarb site. If you’re in consensus you’ll get a special notification (and a RHUCoin award); if you’re not, you’ll be able to see how the voting was distributed among the various options.

Poll verdicts are new, but we anticipate rapid adoption by users in polls involving a wide variety of industries and disputes. Soon there should be plenty of polls to choose from.

Rhubarb expects to have an initial coin offering (ICO) in the first half of 2019, target date to be announced. You can sign up for the white list on this site and reserve an allocation. We expect RHUCoin also to be listed and traded on leading cryptocurrency exchanges after the ICO. Before the ICO, you can also sign up for an airdrop, where you’ll be offered RHUCoin for performing small tasks like sharing the news on social media and voting in one of the initial polls.