Essential Concepts for Understanding the 2key Network
One of the greatest things about building a new technology is coining its name.
While Jim Kardach was developing a new technology to enable wireless communication between computers and phones, he was reading a book about viking rulers. Kardach was fascinated by the particular ruler who united all Danish tribes. The book said that this ruler happened to love blueberries so much that he earned the nickname “Bluetooth” in popular speech. Kardach named the technology he was developing at the time Bluetooth, and that’s the name that stuck to this day.
2key’s technological innovations aren’t named after viking rulers but we still feel like they may need some further explanation. Many of our innovations enable functions that didn’t exist before, so they obviously need some explanation to be properly understood.
The following are a few of the most important concepts for understanding 2key’s technology, in simple words.
The 2key Protocol
The 2key protocol is designed to bring the functionality of smart contracts to people, using regular web browsers and links. Smart contracts are digital contracts that can encapsulate agreement terms and carry them out automatically. . They make it possible to carry out credible transactions without third parties. Yet so far their use has been limited to blockchain-specific applications.
The 2key protocol embeds smart contracts (web 3.0. technology) into regular HTTP links (web 2.0), seamlessly and automatically. In this way, it bridges the gap between our current web 2.0 and the future web 3.0.
Multi-Step Tracking
Multi-step tracking is an innovative protocol that 2key developed, which can be seamlessly embedded within regular HTTP links. It enables regular links to automatically track and record every person who shares them.
At 2key, we’ve used multi-step tracking to create a decentralised network that tracks, records and rewards online entire threads of people sharing links rather than simply individual influencers.
The 2key Network
That’s the platform where you create the links with smart contracts for creating campaigns and achieving your goals. And that’s also the place where you share links and get rewarded for sharing them.
The 2key network allows anyone to easily create contract-links and define a goal. The structure of the network incorporates an innovative incentive model based on game-theory and AI, which incentivises each person in the network to participate in targeting and sharing the link with those who may be interested.
Link-creators, referrers, converters and integrators.
These are the three roles you can play in the 2key Network.
Link-creator
The person or business who creates the contract for a campaign. and shares it with the first group of acquaintances (called the ‘sourcing seed’ in the 2key terminology). Possible campaigns could be a campaign for selling a car or for finding yoga students in a specific neighborhood.
Referrer is a person who passes the link forward to people who may be interested or may know others who’re interested. Referrers know in advance the amount of the reward they could recieve if the link reaches a converter. .So a referrer could receive a link from one friend about selling his car and happen to know that a colleague is currently looking to buy a car and therefore pass her the link.
Converter is a person who takes action through the link.Say, purchases the car through the link or sign up for the local yoga lesson.
Integrator is a for-profit service provider, who can help link creators s to optimise their campaigns. Integrators’ services are fee-based and optional and may include services such as dispute resolution, identity validation, insurance supply or refunds management. In a car sale, for instance, an integrator could be an insurance company that makes sure that the converter who’s made the purchase has transferred the money, before enabling the smart contract to reward all referrers.
Referral chains
In online social networks, people pass on links from one to another.
The same link, then, can pass on from person to person in a long link-sharing chain, with many participants.
What if we could track the link’s movement, and know exactly who are the people who shared it? That’s precisely what 2key’s multi-step tracking enables!
The chain of link-sharing individuals who pass on the same link is recorded by the link itself, these people form the referral chain.
Social-Sourcing
One of the best features of 2key Network is that it enables what we called ‘social sourcing’. Social sourcing is like crowdsourcing, but instead of using the wisdom of the crowd to achieve results, it uses the wisdom of human social networks.
2key allows you to do that, enabling anyone to easily incentivise targeted organic online virality, in order to achieve a desired goal.
Sourcing seed
The sourcing seed is the first group of people to receive a newly created contract-link on the 2key network. This automatically makes them the first group of referrers, the first link in the referral chain.
Obviously, the choice of people for this group is critical in determining the eventual success of any campaign.
On 2key network, contractors will be able to create a sourcing seed list based on their email addresses. So, for example, a yoga instructor who is looking for more students could use the group of her existing students as sourcing seed and ask them to pass on the link to friends who may be interested in yoga.
Incentive Model for Online Sharing
Collaborative efforts require the right incentivization of every individual participating in them.
2key’s protocol enables links to automatically reward every participant who’s shared them once they’ve reached the desired targets.
For link creators, there are three optional models for rewarding those who help their link reach its target:
1.PRE-SET VANILLA MODEL
In this model, the link creator is presented with several options to manually pre-set the division of the rewards for achieving results. The options will include: dividing the rewards equally, dividing the reward so that each new participant receives a greater percentage of the reward than the previous participant, dividing the reward so that the last two participants to join the referral chain gain a greater percentage than the rest, etc.
The model chosen by the contractor will then be embedded into the campaign contract and remain set throughout the campaign.
2. DYNAMIC PARTICIPANT-CHOICE MODEL
Choosing this model will allow each of the participants it a campaign to decide how much of the reward they wish to keep for themselves and how much they choose to pass on to others who may help them achieve a collaborative goal. Because participants need collaboration to achieve their goals, they’ll have to ‘gamble’ with the amount they choose to give to themselves. That’s why we’ve specifically developed a funny UI for this model, which graphically illustrates to participants that the more they choose to keep for themselves, the lower the chances that they’ll achieve the results.
We’re already curious to get some insights into game-theory from this fun model!
3. GLOBAL INCENTIVE MODEL BASED ON GAME THEORY AND AI
We’re fusing game theory with machine learning to create the first general incentive model for online sharing. The model is designed motivate participants to use their energy, intelligence and social connections to relay links to people with interest in them and at the same time prevent spamming.
It does so by distributing the rewards for a link that achieves a result individually, according to the relative contribution of each participant in the referral-chain.
The model takes into account dozens of parameters such as the position in the referral chain, relative result delivery-time, a referer’s past references in this domain and, most importantly — each participant’s calculated ‘reputation score’.
The reputation score is dynamic, reflecting the productivity and relevance of each participant’s link-sharing activity across time. Participants with high conversion rates will gradually improve their reputation scores, for example, while those sharing irrelevant links or spamming, will rapidly lose reputation points.
When a link achieves a result, each participant will receive a percentage of the reward that’s highly influenced by their reputation score, strongly incentivising participants to target wisely the links they share.
Read more about 2key’s revolutionary incentive model here.
Reputation Score
Each participant on the 2key Network has a dynamic reputation score that changes according to their actions. If someone shares useful links with the right people, their score goes up. If someone shares lots of unnecessary or unreliable information, their score goes down. We also let users report spam, so if someone is sending links that are reported as spam, their reputation will also go down.
When a referral chain achieves a result, each person is rewarded depending on their reputation. Reputation scores are the basis of the incentive model, they’re calculated in a way that makes it useless to abuse the network so that it remains reliable, informative and relevant for all.
2KEY Tokens
2KEY tokens are the backbone currency for the 2key network. They’re used to activate new campaigns and incentivize participation, reward for successful sharing, allow participants to monetise their reputation and pay for services offered by the network’s integrators.
Our goal is to design the economy to fuel network participation, while designing the 2key network to boost the economy, so that as more participants join the network, everyone will benefit.
To make this happen, there are a few simple rules guiding the 2key Network’s token economy. For example, participants must accumulate sufficient 2KEYs in order to create 2key contracts, 2KEYs accumulation is periodically rewarded with bonuses and participant’s reputation. If you’d like to learn more about them, read our tokenomics model.
ARCs
ARC stands for Action Referral Coin.
These are tokens that hold no value and are used for technical reasons. They’re called ‘tokens’ in 2key terminology because participants will receive them directly to their wallet as a ‘mock coin’.
TheARC will enable link creators to control the length referral chains, and how many people will be able to view the contract in total, This may be better understood using an example.
Say you’d like to organize a small party for your friends and acquaintances in a relatively small space. You may want to create a contract for promoting the party and the ARC would allow you to pre-define that the links could be shared in threads of up to 3 people, to ensure that only your friends and their friends are invited and not too many people ultimately turn up.
Multi-party state channels
Let’s begin by defining what state channels are, because state-channels are a general concept, while multi-party state channels are a 2key innovation.
State channels have been developed in order to provide a solution to the inherent scalability problem on blockchain networks:
To ensure security, each transaction on a blockchain network involves many calculations and verifications by many computers. This means that each transaction takes a lot of time and this becomes a real problem as the network grows and many participants want to perform transactions.
State-channels solve this problem by creating smaller side-chains between participants, enabling them to quickly perform transactions among themselves and update the general blockchain network with the final results of their transaction.
So far, current state-channels technology has enabled the creation of side-channels between two participants who agree among themselves on the terms of the transaction between them. Other technologies enabled the creation of side-chains with more participants, but have had to sacrifice decentralization in the process, so that their side-chains achieve consensus through a centralized server.
2key’s multi-party state-channels are designed to achieve the holy trinity of security, scalability and decentralization by using state-of-the-art cryptographic methodologies. The unique 2key solution uses nothing but regular web-links and users’ browsers, while still being synced to the Ethereum blockchain. In practice, the 2key solution enables the creation of side-chains for multiple participants, while ensuring scalability, security and decentralization.
2key is currently working to deliver the beta version of the 2key network webapp and mobile apps. We expect to roll out with initial support for other blockchain-based start-ups to run referral campaigns for their token presell events in the coming months.
Some General Concepts That Relate To the 2key Technology
Web 2.0, Web 3.0
The Internet as we know today is called web 2.0 because it is the second generation of the web after the first version was based on peer2peer communication alone. Web 2.0. And it has certainly revolutionized our lives and opened up new possibilities for humanity. The problem is that with time, it grew to be more and more centralized, reaching the current stage, where very few platforms control it almost entirely.
2key’s Network is compatible with both web 2.0. And web 3.0. We’re committed to having a full web 2.0- web 3.0 inter-operability that will allow anyone online to use 2key.
Thanks to blockchain technology and more powerful personal devices, we now have the possibility to create a new type of web. Web 3.0. Will be entirely decentralized, with information flowing directly from one person to another, without requiring the help of a central server.
The technological tools for web 3.0. already exist, but the move will still take time because it requires more wide-scale adoption.
That’s why, at 2key, we plan to be providing participants with the option of using 2key network with 2.0, regardless of blockchain adoption.
Smart contracts
A smart contract is a computer code running on top of a blockchain containing a set of rules under which the parties to that smart contract agree to interact with each other. If and when the pre-defined rules are met, the agreement is automatically enforced. The smart contract code facilitates, verifies, and enforces the negotiation or performance of an agreement or transaction. It is the simplest form of decentralized automation.
2key’s innovation is a protocol that seamlessly embeds smart-contracts within regular HTTP links. This creates an intermediate layer that combines web 3.0 elements with web 2.0 infrastructure to offer a decentralized alternative for online information sharing for everyone.
If you’d like to help in achieving this vision, join our amazing telegram community of visionaries, pioneers and crypto-fans! Or visit us on our website: https://www.2key.network/
