Arcus
Infrastructure for verifying what happens in the physical world.
Digital systems have become extraordinarily capable of organizing information, processing transactions, and coordinating activities. But establishing whether something actually happened in the physical world remains a significant challenge.
An organization can offer an incentive for someone to take public transportation, but it needs a reliable way to determine whether the qualifying trip occurred. A venue can record a ticket purchase or RSVP without necessarily knowing whether someone attended. A business can receive a claim that an activity was completed without having sufficient evidence to verify it.
These distinctions become increasingly important when organizations are making financial decisions, administering programs, or reporting results based on real-world activity.
We’re building Arcus to provide infrastructure for that verification.
From Reported Activity to Verified Outcomes
Arcus is designed to evaluate permitted evidence against defined program requirements and determine whether a qualifying activity occurred.
The underlying process is straightforward.
An organization establishes the requirements for an eligible activity. Relevant evidence is collected with appropriate permissions. Arcus evaluates that evidence against the applicable rules and produces a verification decision and supporting record.
That record can then be used by authorized systems to support incentives, program administration, reporting, or other actions.
The distinction between a claim and a verified outcome is central to what we’re building.
A person saying they completed an activity is different from having sufficient evidence that the activity met a defined requirement.
Likewise, verifying that an activity occurred does not necessarily establish what caused it.
Maintaining those distinctions will become increasingly important as businesses and institutions use technology to administer programs tied to real-world behavior.
Transportation and Mobility Programs
Transportation is one of the initial applications of Arcus.
Employers, universities, venues, transportation agencies, and governments have opportunities to encourage behaviors that improve mobility, including carpooling, public transportation, walking, cycling, and traveling outside peak congestion periods.
These programs can involve incentives, employer benefits, public funding, or other resources intended to encourage particular transportation choices.
For those programs to operate effectively, organizations need ways to determine whether participants satisfied the requirements for receiving benefits.
The record of a trip is usually split. An agency, an employer, a transit operator, a venue and a rider each hold a piece. Arcus does not take the incentive or reward money. It checks permitted evidence against the rule and issues the decision, the authorization and the receipt. When a program pays, the funds run through Hytch’s payment rail.
Arcus is being developed to support that process, verifying qualifying transportation activities and producing records that can be used for administration and reporting.
This creates opportunities to improve transportation demand management programs by connecting incentives with evidence of actual behavior.
It also provides a foundation for evaluating participation and program performance, while preserving the distinction between verifying an eligible trip and demonstrating that a program caused a broader transportation outcome.
Applications Beyond Transportation
The same verification challenge exists across many industries.
Live entertainment businesses need to understand attendance and participation. Organizations administering incentive programs need to determine whether participants completed eligible activities. Public agencies and private businesses may need reliable records demonstrating that particular requirements were satisfied.
Through MobileFlow, Hytch and Tally provide initial applications for Arcus.
Hytch creates opportunities to verify qualifying mobility activities and support transportation programs. Tally applies verification to live-audience participation and related commercial activities.
Over time, I see opportunities to extend this infrastructure into additional markets where organizations need to establish reliable records of real-world outcomes.
The larger ambition is to develop a reusable verification layer that can serve different applications without requiring every organization to build its own systems from the beginning.
Verification, Accountability, and Trust
As artificial intelligence becomes more capable and digital systems take on greater responsibility for coordinating real-world activities, reliable verification will become increasingly valuable.
Organizations will need to distinguish between information that has been reported, information that has been evaluated against defined requirements, and conclusions that can reasonably be drawn from that evidence.
Arcus is being developed around that distinction.
Our approach emphasizes defined policies, permissioned evidence, documented verification decisions, and records that organizations can use for accountability.
The technology should make outcome-based programs easier to administer while improving the quality of information available to the organizations responsible for them.
The objective is not to suggest that every physical activity can be verified with absolute certainty. It’s to provide more reliable and transparent methods for evaluating evidence and determining whether specific requirements have been satisfied.
The Larger Opportunity
I believe the next generation of software will increasingly connect digital decisions with physical-world outcomes.
Artificial intelligence can help organizations analyze information, coordinate operations, and make decisions. But when those decisions depend on real-world activity, the systems involved need trustworthy ways to establish what occurred.
That creates opportunities for infrastructure that can verify eligible activities, document decisions, and support the actions that follow.
We’re building Arcus to serve that need.
Transportation incentives and live-event participation provide initial applications, but the long-term opportunity extends across industries where businesses and institutions need reliable information about real-world outcomes.
My ambition is to develop Arcus into infrastructure that makes these programs easier to implement, more accountable, and more useful to the organizations and people they serve.