UNION, a platform that combines bundled protection and a liquid secondary market with a multi-token model, today announced a new partnership with Kleros, the open-source online resolution protocol for adjudicating digital contract disputes.
Kleros will build a Claims Manager connector smart contract (via the ERC-729 standard) to the UNION platform, accelerating UNION’s claims and challenge process for UNION in the short term, and serving as an additional arbitration layer operating in parallel with UNION’s multi-layer arbitration framework in the long term.
“This partnership with UNION is an important step in Kleros’ mission of bringing fair and transparent resolution for the decentralized ecosystem. UNION’s groundbreaking work in bringing established financial protection expertise and models to the DeFi space will enable new users to benefit from Open Finance services while managing their risks. This partnership sets the ground for onboarding the masses to decentralized finance.”
— Federico Ast, Kleros CEO
Kleros is a dispute resolution protocol built on Ethereum and guided by the Coopérative Kleros, a Société Coopérative d’Intérêt Collectif (SCIC) incorporated in France. Kleros deploys a crowdsource-based adjudication system designed to arbitrate digital contracts between entities across e-commerce, DeFi, freelancing, intellectual property, and other fields via a decentralized, blockchain-based court system.
The UNION and Kleros partnership will initially encompass integrating the Kleros Claims Manager contract (that will forward potential disputes to Kleros Court) into the UNION platform. While UNION’s multi-layer governance process and claims system is undergoing development, Kleros’ integration will operate like a streamlined, third-party arbitration system for processing UNION claims. The Claims Manager will serve as a simplified resolution solution for accelerating DeFi protection offerings on UNION while community governance matures.
“Kleros’ proven protocol with a clean and transparent integration to navigate is perfect for accelerating UNION’s product suite. Additionally, our users can rest assured that their claims will always be decided in a fair and transparent fashion with access to incentivized industry experts.”
— John Liu, UNION CPO
Features
Claims initiated on UNION will either be validated directly or challenged and pushed to the Kleros Court to follow the standard dispute resolution protocol via Kleros arbitrator smart contracts. Claims submitters on UNION register claims alongside relevant case information and any potential challengers can open a dispute in the Kleros Court. In the case of a challenge, the Claims Manager contract selects the number of jurors and the appropriate Kleros Court to render a ruling.
For example, if Alice files a claim for a smart contract protection pool on UNION and there is no challenge, the Claims Manager contract will render the claim valid, trigger an automatic payout, or notify the UNION platform of the ruling. Conversely, if Bob challenges Alice’s claim, a dispute will open in the relevant Kleros Court. Alice and Bob subsequently present evidence on behalf of their cases during the “Evidence Phase” that adheres to the ERC-1497 standard. The selected Kleros jurors, who are economically incentivized via arbitration fees, settle the dispute.
Cases are also subject to an appeal phase should Alice or Bob elect to elevate the dispute further up the Kleros Court system. However, once a final decision is delivered, an automatic payout is dispersed, and the UNION platform is informed of the ruling.
Moving forward, Kleros and UNION will continue to collaborate on improving claims-challenge dispute resolution modeling for UNION’s protection pools.