Boson Protocol’s Path to Decentralization
About Boson
Boson Protocol is foundational public infrastructure for commerce, enabling developers to build commerce apps that everyone can trust and anyone can use, whilst creating a globally searchable liquid digital marketplace for things.
Boson is progressively decentralizing towards community governance via the Boson Protocol DAO.
This evolution aligns the incentives of buyers and sellers, and reduces platform risk for builders — and results in strong and verifiable guarantees for Boson commerce transactions.
The protocol is designed to allow all participants to share in the value they create, with fees that are sufficient to sustain and grow the project, and with community governance that ensures Boson remains minimally extractive, forever.
Boson is enabling a decentralized commerce ecosystem by incentivizing the development of tools and interfaces for the dCommerce stack through a Boson Protocol DAO.
The Boson DAO is a community-governed DAO for funding the growth of the dCommerce ecosystem. Curated by the community, the Boson Protocol DAO will fund projects that build core dCommerce software, applications, tools and integrations.
$BOSON tokens are used by participants to govern Boson Protocol, ensuring consensus around critical decisions and the issuance of funds from the dCommerce DAO.
Why Boson is needed
Boson Protocol exists to replace a commerce system which is ‘broken by design’, where value is farmed by a handful of monopolistic intermediaries. Powerful e-commerce platforms have captured the market, driven by a relentless pursuit of extraction.
In 2021, Boson Protocol raised $36m on a trillion-dollar dCommerce opportunity. Investors bought into our vision to build the decentralized network upon which commerce will run.
Boson is on a roadmap of progressive decentralization, rapidly evolving from start-up to scale-up and then fully decentralized organization.
We’re right on track to achieve this three-phase masterplan.
Seize the opportunities of Web3
The advent of Web3 technologies enables the automation of settlement by smart contracts and the tokenisation of physical asset commerce transactions into a universal standard such as NFTs.
Just as DeFi’s ‘money lego’ applications have begun to unbundle traditional finance, so an ecosystem of decentralized ‘commerce lego’ protocols and applications will evolve to create an open, equitable marketplace for things, where buyers, sellers and makers get to share in the value they create.
Imagine a fairer future where the value created by commerce is shared amongst the many, not just the few.
Boson aims to release the stranglehold of intermediaries, providing a commerce settlement layer for Web3. An interoperable and connective protocol to mediate commerce transactions. Think TCP/IP protocol, but instead of data, Boson carries trust.
Boson Protocol’s path to decentralization
As permissionless public infrastructure for commerce, the question of how Boson should be governed is critical. While the technical design and implementation of Boson continually develops, we have stayed true to our original governance aims:
● fair and equitable distribution of ownership, value and control.
● capture resistant from centralized, extractive entities.
● regulatory compliance with legitimate authorities.
● community ownership and operation.
Our end goal has always been to become fully decentralized, owned, operated and governed by our community via the Boson DAO.
By following the principles of progressive decentralization across the three phases of start-up, scale-up and then decentralization, we are on course to realize our vision for change.
As we approach the launch of Boson Protocol v2 this summer, we are exiting start-up and entering the scale-up phase.
Below is an analysis of Boson Protocol’s plan for progressive decentralization across the five key dimensions of Product & Technology, Economic Sustainability, Ecosystem Funding, Treasury Management, Community Participation and Token Distribution.
The dimensions of decentralization
Product & Technology
Start-up
The primary reason for starting-out centralized is to enable the complex design and build of the core Boson Protocol, so it can be completed in the most efficient and effective manner. We believe this requires a lean startup approach with design and build by a group of experts, with the ability to iterate rapidly towards product/market fit.
This we have done. We launched v1 of Boson Protocol in November 2021, enabling the build of the metaverse commerce app Boson Portal. This app has gained significant traction, not least as the commerce partner for Decentraland’s Metaverse fashion week, with partners such as Tommy Hilfiger, Hogan, Deadfellaz, 8Asian and Fang Gang. The process has also provided invaluable user feedback to the protocol team on desired features for v2.
Scale-up
For v2 we assembled a dream team of world class experts and advisors, including an Ethereum Foundation researcher, Harvard blockchain legal scholar and the world’s best game theorists. The learnings from the first use cases of v1 were fed into the design team. With design complete, Boson Protocol v2 launches later this year, as an open public network with product / protocol-market fit and significant traction.
To support this more open network, we will be developing in the open (v2 code will be closed until shortly before launch to protect our head start), investing heavily in documentation and developer relations, and providing grants and bounties to incentivize a host of integrations across multiple metaverses, gaming platforms and e-commerce systems. At this stage, there will be more community members involved in the design of the protocol through the signalling DAO process, dependent on the approval of the core developers.
Design of Boson Protocol v3 will remain quite centralized, but build will decentralize to include multiple teams. A community of engineers and Web3 builders will be incentivised to join our effort, to ensure a more effective and diverse process. Technical governance will include measures to reduce platform risk for projects building on the protocol.
Decentralized
In the last stage of the decentralization process, the core team will step back and the community, through the Boson Protocol DAO, will ultimately take responsibility for the design and the build of the protocol.
Economic sustainability
Start-up
In 2021, Boson Protocol raised $36m on a trillion-dollar dCommerce opportunity, as investors recognized a viable plan to build the decentralized network upon which commerce will run. Initially this will provide the necessary funds to design, build and scale the network. During the start-up phase, no fees will be charged to participants of the network. In fact, early adopter token rewards will be paid out to overcome the bootstrapping problem.
Scale-up
Once we have developed sufficient network effects to protect against switching costs and/or forking, a transaction fee will be proposed to the community via a signalling vote. This fee will enable the sustainability of the network and will be distributed to the community to incentivize contribution.
Decentralized
The end goal for the protocol is to be self-sustainable and finance its own operations, therefore the community will be free to activate, set and distribute the fees via DAO voting. Changes to fee structures will require an extraordinary majority.
Ecosystem funding
Start-up
The initial funding process happens via through proposals submitted and voted on Snapshot. Bounties are given to the community for developing targeted integrations with Boson Protocol in multiple metaverses, games and blockchains.
Scale-up
The second stage of funding will involve community grants curated by the community. The project groups, mostly technical in nature, will register one proposal per funding round, which will take place at the beginning of each month. The community will be able to support teams and vote on the best projects that will make the Boson Protocol grow organically.
Additionally, proposals and votes will be encouraged to fund different activities connected to the Boson Protocol ecosystem and technical build. All the while, the foundation will be involved in the process.
Decentralized
The Boson Protocol DAO will control the funding of the groups, units, and core communities working on the support and growth of Boson Protocol. The funding will be done through grants voted by the Boson DAO.
Treasury management
Start-up
The treasury is managed by the foundation which takes care of its distribution.
Scale-up
The community will participate more actively in the process with signalling votes on token distribution and different ways the community could earn additional tokens, for example through the usage of the protocol.
Decentralized
The final Decentralized stage will be reached once the tokens are distributed widely and with adequate protection set up against mass token burning and other governance attacks.
Community participation
Start-up
Starting with this blog post, we ask you, as a member of the Boson community, to vote on the proposals described in this blog post that will determine the future of Boson Protocol’s development. Today, with this blog, we are committing to our decentralization roadmap. We will open a discussion on our social media for you to share your opinion and suggestions. Any feedback is welcome. We would like to create a place for your contribution and involve you in the decision making process. Join the discussion in our Discord channel.
Scale-up
In the next stage of our decentralization roadmap, we are going to delegate some of the main management and business operations to the ecosystem, particularly to different groups that will take over the development of specific parts of the protocol. Core units will be overseeing some of the topic related projects, like applications built, as well as other supportive operations to Boson Protocol, like marketing and communication activities.
Decentralized
Taking into consideration all the elements described in this blog post, Boson Protocol will, in its third and final phase, exit to the community as a fully decentralized protocol.
Token Distribution
Start-up
Initially token distribution will be quite narrow, mainly held by early token buyers and network participants.
Scale-up
Token rewards will be issued to incentivize early adoption, with retrospective airdrops released to reward our early supporters and true believers.
Decentralized
The target endstate is for tokens to be widely distributed across the community of protocol users, ensuring alignment of incentives and robust governance.
Be part of an open and more equitable future of commerce.
Join our conversation on Discord (#governance-dao channel), Twitter, and Telegram.
Join our next Community Meetup to discuss on 31 May, 4:30 UTC
Vote for this proposal from 8 June to 14 June on Snapshot: dao.bosonprotocol.io/#/
