Boson Protocol is becoming the decentralized exchange protocol for anyThing. What does this actually mean?
In the distant past, there was the physical world and that was it. If you wanted to buy something, you walked or drove to a shop. If you wanted to speak to someone, you arranged to meet them in real life. News came from a newspaper printed on pages that you could turn, and money was metal coins or paper notes that were exchanged in person.
Somewhere in between, radio, television and the internet happened. We could communicate virtually. Web 2.0 and banks’ adoption of card technologies meant that we could shop online and communicate without being face to face. Game worlds began to emerge where we could be whomever we choose and we could buy digital artefacts using currencies that were created and intermediated by banks and gaming companies.
We have been living in a Web 2.0 world for the last two decades or so, and e-commerce has become just another way of shopping. Yet we still make a clear distinction between what we call the ‘real’ world and the digital, or virtual, world.
What is ‘real’ and what is digital?
The Covid pandemic has hastened trends that were already happening, and people are beginning to question this artificial distinction. If I am talking to someone on Zoom, speaking at a virtual conference, hanging out with friends in Fortnite or browsing NFTs at an art gallery in Decentraland, is this not also ‘real’ life? Is the digital ‘me’ any less real than my physical self?
People are becoming more accustomed to the idea of crypto-assets and digital possessions such as in-game objects, avatars and skins. Yet most people will still draw a rigid distinction between the items they own in the physical world and things that have an exclusively digital presence. In other words, the digital things we own and our tangible possessions — our Things — are not interoperable.
Existing DEXs do a good job of allowing the exchange of on-chain assets. But once we start thinking in terms of transacting with off-chain goods and services, there has been no solution.
Boson Protocol is changing this. The Protocol is designed as an entirely interoperable DEX for anyThing. We envisage it as like TCP/IP, but for exchanging any goods and services, whether these are purely digital, purely physical or a mixture of the two.
What does this mean in real terms?
When decentralized exchanges — DEXs — evolved, they enabled liquidity provision without the intermediation of centralized authorities. Traditional crypto exchanges operate under an order book model. The trade-off is that whoever is running the exchange decides which tokens are listed and what their trading pairs should be. This can have advantages and disadvantages.
In contrast, a DEX allows anyone in the world to create a trading pair and enable price discovery for one asset in terms of another — provided there is sufficient liquidity.
At the moment, there is no single protocol for handling different categories of goods and services. We are used to the idea that to buy or sell items of clothing, we need a heavily intermediated centralized services, to buy tickets we need a ticketing agent and to buy in-game assets or NFTs we need a specialised digital platform.
The DEX for anyThing
Boson Protocol’s Generic Exchange Mechanism abstracts away the minutiae that differentiate different product types and instead provides an interface that allows buyers and sellers to treat all assets in exactly the same way, regardless of whether they are digital, physical or digiphysical.
Hence we can use the same mechanism for a commerce transaction involving a custom avatar or digital collectible as we would for a designer bag or a pair of collectible sneakers, effectively blurring the boundaries between the real world and the virtual world.
Imagine an event where tickets are issued in the form of Commitment NFTs, which also confer the right to physical swag and collectibles, plus also a video of the event.
This bundling of on-chain and off-chain assets is quite a complicated problem to solve. We have some of the best game theorists and token engineers working on the Generic Exchange Mechanism. However, from the end user’s perspective, the mechanism will be easy to use and understand — and will form the basis of a frictionless economic future that effortlessly spans our physical and digital experiences.
About Boson Protocol
Boson Protocol’s vision is to enable a decentralized commerce ecosystem by funding and enabling the development of a stack of specialist applications to disrupt, demonopolize and democratize commerce.
Keen to learn more?
Enjoy our Lightpaper.
In a hurry?
Check out our One Pager.
Want to dive deeper?
Read our whitepaper.
Builders, we have news for you:
Our Core Repo is open on GitHub and here’s the Documentation website.
Lastly, if you’re a decentralization enthusiast, please follow us here, on Medium. We will post frequently about our dCommerce journey and would love to hear your comments!
