Connect your MetaMask to start.

KYODO is under development. It’s being tested and built on Rinkeby network. It is best optimized for desktop usage, so we recommend Chrome or Firefox with Metamask plugin installed.

Choose Rinkeby testnet.

You will need some small amount of Rinkeby ETH to pay for gas. You can get it for free using Faucet or asking people in our Riot chat.

Go http://kyodo.decent.fund/

Attach your Riot username* to your ETH address by clicking your wallet address in the top right corner.

*your _username*@matrix.org

By clicking “attach” you send the transaction in Metamask to Rinkeby testnet.

Open STATS tab.

Take a look at KYODO dashboard. You can see three blocks here:

Your DF token balance is in the center. You most probably have 0 DF tokens, and it’s zero percentage from total Decent.fund cap. You can earn DF tokens by contributing to Decent.fund and getting points for the impression made.

Tips and points.

Members reward other members’ work by tipping them with points. Tips are collected during a period and at the end of a period will be converted to DF token and will be transferred to a private ETH address.

Another block to the left is about main Decent.fund metrics: total supply / cap / price / members’ number.

The block to the right shows how the token supply changes for the current period.

Period — is a limited interval of time (45 days for now) during which a member contributes to the community and gets tipped for it.

Go to Riot Decent.Fund page.

Choose some channels you would like to participate.
Every channel represents a topic Decent.Fund is interested in. There is a variety of them: BUIDL; crypto economy; blockchain consensus; blockchain governance; education and more.

Every channel belongs to a domain* from the list:

🦄 DEV domain (UI/UX design, programming, digital marketing)

✏️ SOCIAL domain (research, articles, infographics, meetups, hackathons, social activity)

📈 FUND management domain (smart investment, crypto asset management)

💛 GOV domain (strategy)

A domain is like a folder in a shared filesystem — Colony white paper

Please, also join the “Introduction” channel, read about the members and say a couple of words about yourself.

Choose the more channels you can to feel the flow and choose finally your topics or you can start a new one.

Contribute.

Browse channels you are interested in, read about current issues, ask members about projects, check DF Github.

The fastest and easiest way to get points and earn DF token is to start posting to Random, Education, Twitter or Medium channels.
More tips you earn the bigger Decent.fund share you have. Also, earning points will let you tip other members in the next period.

Tip members.

KYODO aims to BUIDL the community where every member is motivated to evaluate other members’ work. So we are working on incentive model for KYODO crypto economy. We are constantly improving this model, you can read about the current status here.

At this stage we are using points to evaluate a contribution. The tipping process is called “impression revenue model”. The process of giving points to members is managed by the points bot.

Initially, you won’t be able to tip other members till the next period. Since you have some DF tokens can brows Riot channels and tip other members. The fastest way to see contributions is Github Riot channel. It’s connected to DF Github and contains all the info about recent commits.

Reward contributors that posted something exciting.
Send a command to the points bot like:

!dish 20 SOCIAL points to @alina_loseva for adding Cover for “How to start KYODO” (github issue #11)
or
!dish 25 BUIDL points to @igor for adding the subdomain to ease the way to Riot (github issue #103)

Put an amount of the points you want to tip. Define a domain the contribution belongs to BUIDL, SOCIAL, FUND, GOV. Then put a Riot nick of a member you want to tip and describe your impression.

Check your balance in http://kyodo.decent.fund/

Also, check the positions of other members in different domains. The leaders are highlighted.

Governance tab.

Decent.Fund follows Axiarchy governance model, means that the decision making is based on merit. Only members with the merit have the access to the Gov domain.
One of the Gov domain’s function is to manage the DF token distribution between domains and define a strategy for Decent.fund.

We are still in a buidling process on Rinkeby testnet, so we constantly develop the KYODO structure every time we have a better solution to run our DAO.
Stay in touch to know how it’s going!

Credits

coauthor Igor Line

cover picture by Alina Loseva

Follow D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium and Twitter

• Incentive tool for sustainable decentralized organizations — KYODO
• KYODO Tokenomics
• Kyodo — “You decide your own level of involvement”

How to start KYODO was originally published in D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

KYODO is the cross-platform incentive tool to build the crypto economy for DAO based on Impression revenue model.

Economy model

We BUIDL KYODO to manage Decent.Fund

KYODO is the tool for organizing DAO — decentralized community with common goals. Members accumulate commonwealth by a relevant activity performing tasks in different domains. This wealth is represented by DF token and stored in the Fund — multisig wallet of the community.

Every community that is built on KYODO can issue its tokens and give its name. Also, the set of domains is optional and can be created according to the professional interests of a community.

Decent.Fund mission is to contribute to the mass adoption of the decentralized solutions, making the concepts of the new crypto economy closer to the unchained world. According to the mission Decent.Fund focuses on the following types of activities which are divided between domains*:

1. BUIDL domain (UI/UX design, Programming, Digital marketing)
2. SOCIAL domain (research, articles, infographics, meetups, hackathons, social)
3. FUND management domain (smart investment, crypto assets management)
4. GOV domain (strategy)

The productivity of every member in a domain is being recorded during a period (e.g., one month) and evaluated with points by other members. At the end of every period earned points are converted to the corresponding share of issued DF tokens for the bounty as inflation within the network. A member receives earned DF tokens to a member’s ETH address at the end of a period.

Governance

Decent.Fund chose Axiarchy governance model that supposes that the decision making is based on merit. Only members with merit represented by NFT token* have access to the Gov domain.

One of the Gov domain’s function is to define the distribution of tokens between domains to stimulate members activity. The amount of DF tokens defines the importance of a domain in a certain period. As soon as KYODO implements Impression revenue model — the instant tipping, DF tokens members hold are converted to points at the beginning of each period. We implement tips to reduce the transaction cost that would be very high on blockchain considering a good workflow velocity. Domains’ members use points to reward completed tasks.

Also, DF token emission is regulated by the GOV domain.

DF token emission = Total supply * inflation rate

Token model

KYODO has continuous token types : DF token and DF merit.

Token model is described in terms of Token classification proposed by Untitled INC.

DF token

Purpose: Cryptocurrency. The DF token serves as payment for tasks and as the medium of exchange . The DF token is tied to the fund of the community.

DF token price = Total cap / Circulating supply

DF token also is a Network token that gives:

• Ability to set a task
• Ability to claim a task
• Ability to initiate a dispute

Underlying value: The value generated by the Decent.Fund increases the DF token value and wealth of every member in a community.

Utility: DF token is the hybrid token that has traits of both Usage and Work tokens:

• Grants access to system functionalities
• Allows owner to contribute to the system

Legal status: Utility token, closely tied to functionality. Grants owners to contribute to the system vs. passive investor role.

Tech layer: Ethereum ERC20 token.

How to obtain DF token: buy in the FUND domain or on a decentralized exchange, and earn by completing tasks in domains of Decent.Fund.

DFMerit

Purpose: Network token, not intended to be cryptocurrency, has the functionality within the system — gives access to participate in GOV domain.

Utility: Usage token — the token provides access to Gov domain

Underlying value: doesn’t have a monetary value.

Legal status: Utility token

How to obtain a merit: apply to the GOV domain. Consensus on voting will be reached by majority voting “yes”.

Tech layer — Ethereum ERC721 (NFT) token

Incentives

Incentives involve both monetary and non-monetary rewards and punishments, including the pay-for-performance reward systems (Impression revenue model) and Inflation:

• Impression revenue model — DF tokens received for appreciated contribution to the community;
• Holder value —DF token value increases throughout time due to increase of assets holding by the fund;
• Inactivity punishment — Passive members’ share is decreasing due to inflation.

Inflation

As a negative incentive, KYODO uses inflation mechanism to stimulate members activity. The personal asset of an inactive member is affected by inflation up to 5% in a period. The Inflation is dynamic and depends on fund revenue. KYODO doesn’t apply the inflation if there is no activity shown and doesn’t have an income, for example. Also, we are researching a proper solution in the case if any significant income dilutes members share and increases the inflation for inactive members. We are not interested in bankrupting our members.

FUND management

The FUND domain members specialize in smart investment searching for projects that make mass adoption closer and bring more value to the ecosystem for the ecosystem of the decentralized world. Decent.fund invests on the early stage in such projects and holds an index fund for tradable ones.
All the fund’s holdings are transparent; members can see the changes of the portfolio on KYODO Fund stats page.
As soon as DF token is tied to the community fund, we are planning to integrate Set protocol to manage the Decent.Fund portfolio automatically. It means that the FUND domain’s members vote for a share of the fund they want to have in certain tokens then the Set protocol rebalances token automatically at the right time for the good price.

Opened issue

The question is how to implement the inflation to reward the active members for demanded contribution and motivate passive members to do minimum efforts to support the system and not to lose his stake because of long-lived inflation. Please, share your thoughts and leave a comment under this article. 🙏🏿

Credits

coauthor Igor Line

cover picture by Alina Loseva

edited by Masha Pipenko

Follow D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium and Twitter

Incentive tool for sustainable decentralized organizations — KYODO

KYODO Tokenomics was originally published in D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The project KYODO is developed by Decent.Fund as a part of Blockternship hackathon. We BUIDL KYODO to manage Decent.Fund. Special thanks to Igor Line for the crazy coding and romochka for the coolest design.

The Internet is the main source for job seekers. More than that a lot of advanced specialists choose maximum freedom and prefer to be a part of decentralized organization. The switching between two different worlds may confuse new DAO members, they may feel a lack of regulations because of fluid nature of DAO. It’s sometimes hard to be engaged in a workflow with the community which ideologically close but totally distant physically.

KYODO aims to facilitate the entry to on-chain world for everybody who is interested in the new form of economy based on the blockchain. Unlike regular freelance services, blockchain-based platform KYODO provides trust between unknown members without any controlling units, eases a workflow, distributes revenue and inspires for new quests.

KYODO is the tool for building DAO — decentralized community with common goals. The optional set of domains includes the activities that lead to goal completing. The unique incentives model of KYODO motivates distant members to act more efficiently.

KYODO is the cross-platform incentive tool to build the crypto economy for DAO based on Impression revenue model.

The workflow goes through Riot which serves as the interface to the database for generating tasks for KYODO. These tasks could be instantly evaluated and tipped (paid) by other members of the community. We call it Impression revenue model. We believe that instant reaction to a work performed and the instant revenue motivate members and engage them deeper into the workflow.

Though KYODO tipping model initially came from Giveth bot for Riot but KYODO keeps the data on the blockchain. The tipping data and tasks are collected in KYODO backend (IPFS) during the period, then recorded to the blockchain once in a period — all of these reducing the transaction costs.

KYODO connects Colony platform with Riot, and also uses Aragon as a basis for as a core element for governance.

KYODO is planning to be used on different communication platforms, Jitsi for example. Imaging tipping Griff Green during a community call.

We BUIDL KYODO to manage Decent.Fund

Decent.Fund

Decent.Fund mission is to contribute to the mass adoption of the decentralized solutions, making the concepts of the new crypto economy closer to unchain world. According to the mission Decent.Fund focuses on the following types of activities which are divided between domains*:

1. DEV domain (UI/UX design, programming, digital marketing)
2. EDU domain (research, articles, infographics, meetups, hackathons, social activity)
3. FUND management domain (smart investment, crypto asset management)
4. GOV domain (strategy)

As the org structure Decent.fund is defined as Adhocracy — the liquid structure that has an adaptive, creative and flexible integrative behavior based on non-permanence and spontaneity.

Decent.Fund uses DF token that serves as payment for tasks and as the medium of exchange . The DF token is tied to assets’ value of the fund of the community.

Every community that is built on KYODO can issue its own token and give it whatever name. Also the set of domain is optional, and can be created accordingly to professional interests of a community.

KYODO / Decent.Fund workflow

Domains

Every period GOV members define which domain is more important and according to this fund distributes tokens to domains.

The domains’ funding comes from the community fund, generated by the previous members’ activity. All the domains receive their share in DF token which is bonded with Decent.fund crypto assets portfolio. Members of each domain spend DF tokens as tips for completed tasks.

Task payment

There are two task models in KYODO:

1. Task setting. Every member of a specific domain can set a task by staking DF tokens. A member defines a pot of the task that each member of a domain could apply for and get the pot for the completed task.

2. Impression revenue model.

When a task was completed voluntarily and after posting it was tipped multiple times by the other members.

E.g. Imaging you get obsessed with a new blockchain protocol with the highest velocity and lowest transactions costs. You want that everybody knows it. You do the research; you write an article; you post a link to EDU domain in Riot; you get tipped.

In the end of a period, a member should verify the tips she paid if she doesn’t agree she opens a dispute with a button “Disagree”. A dispute goes to the GOV domain for further voting.

Governance in KYODO

Inspired by discourse that Xavi Vives opened on Meritocracy definition we decided to use Axiarchy term Xavi Vives also proposed. Meritocracy makes specific reference to “power” while Axiarchy refers to government.

Axía “value, merit”, from Greek αξία, and -archy, from Ancient Greek -αρχίᾱarkhíā “rule, government”

Governance domain is built on Aragon platform.

The merit in KYODO is the value in decision making defined by: skills, experience, dedication, intention and more. In KYODO we are thinking of using NFT token to represent Merit. GOV domain is the one that distribute the Merit. Only members with the merit can participate in the GOV domain. One member has only one Merit meaning one member has only one vote. The decision making in Gov domain’s goes through the voting on Aragon platform.

Feel free to join our Riot and find a channel which is relevant to you.

Opened issue

The tip’s size. Remains unclear how to estimate the amount of tips for a task.Which metrics we have to consider rewording someone for action. Please, share your thoughts and leave a comment under this article. 🙏🏿

Credits

coauthor Igor Line

cover picture by Alina Loseva

edited by Masha Pipenko

Follow D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium and Twitter

Incentive tool for sustainable decentralized organizations — KYODO was originally published in D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This analysis is written as an exercise for Advanced Cryptoeconomics Fellowship. It is not, and should not be regarded as “investment advice”. The coauthor Igor Line

Project description

Dether is the Dapp for Ethereum, a marketplace to buy/sell cryptocurrency with cash. You can use Dether to spot a seller or buyer near you, communicate through secure anonymous chat. Dether became partners with the FOAM — consensus-driven map, so we expect that the buyer/seller location will be verified. Plus it’s a decentralized solution for local businesses to manage payments with cryptocurrency.

Mechanism / Network effect

In order to sell cryptocurrency in the certain location (zone), a user should buy a license stake 42 DTH worth to trade up to 1000 USD of daily (the limitation will depend on local regulations).

A user sells cryptocurrency and gets loyalty points which are correlated with the number of trades the user makes and its volume. The loyalty points could be used to unlock “premium features” such as the ability to compete for owing a zone (being zone operator) or owning geographically locked keywords. Zone size is 30 m² for now. A competition process will go through the Spectrum auction and will be open for 24 hours. To prevent the power concentration staked loyalty points will reduce every 24 hours.

So the Incentives here are: owning geographically locked keywords or owing a zone (being a zone operator), ability to collect fees from other users of the zone you own. Incentives aren’t tied to DTH token.

To compete for a zone operator status seems to be a dominant strategy for a user, but only in conditions of high demand. If there is enough space on a map and other incentives aren’t defined, the dominant strategy for a user appears to search for a cheapest/fastest/easiest way to make a sale. So the competition for owning a zone is not really relevant here.

Since a mechanism wasn’t designed to incentivize a user to grow the network, the future network effect remains to be questionable. In addition, the equilibrium in this ecosystem isn’t evident.

Example

Barcelona area — 101.9 million m² — 399 666 zones

Number of total users applied for Dether beta version — 10 000

Each zone could place more than one user. It’s hard to initiate a competition in this case.

DTH token classification

Token purpose — Network token

DTH token provides the access to the peer to peer marketplace of cryptocurrency, it doesn’t represent a general cryptocurrency on Dether platform. In the given token model there is no ability to earn DTH token in the system.

Technical layer — ERC20 Ethereum token

Utility — Usage token

Grants holders access to the service.

Legal status — Utility token

DTH fungible token represents functionality on Dether meaning doesn’t held in expectation of future profits and free from SEC monitoring.

Underlaying value — Network value token

DTH token value is tied to a network size. More tokens are staked for a license more liquidity DTH token gets, so the network effect plays the crucial role here. How many users Dether should engage to increase the DTH token value? See some calculation below.

Token economy

The number of users Dether aims to achieve is one of the main metrics for DTH token evaluation. I didn’t succeed in getting data about the marketing campaign since the Dether’s team takes the attitude of some centralized entity keeping in secret the info that directly affects investor’s reliance.

To figure out the potential value of the project I will make some assumptions based on the best case scenario and the data I’ve found.

ÐTH token distribution model:

100.000.000 ÐTH max will be minted:
- 60% Token sale
- 3% Bounty program
- 18% Team (vested for 3 years with a 6-month release program)
- 3% Advisors (vested for 6 months)
- 5% Early contributors (vested for 6 months)
- 11% Strategic Partnerships

Current Dether wallet balance — 9 716 ETH — $3 954 373.39 (@ $406.97/ETH)

Withdrawn from Dether wallet— 4734 ETH — $3 019 637,891

Let’s say that 30% of the total Dether income from sales will go for marketing.

Marketing costs = (Current balance $3 954 373.39 +Withdrawn $3 019 637.891)*0.3 = $2 092 203

Assuming that the marketing campaign will be highly effective, the acquisition costs will be 1user/1$ and every 1$ spent will bring 1 user, Dether will have 2 092 203 users — beautiful result 🎉

Token evaluation

Relaying on Chris Burniske vision a crypto asset serves as a means of exchange, store of value, and unit of account, each crypto asset serves as a currency in the protocol economy it supports. To understand the flow of money needed to support economy the equation of exchange is used, rather than for crypto asset valuations the same method became a cornerstone — Chris Burniske thinks.

Defining components for calculation applying cryptoeconomy is still the disputable topic. The first problem is estimating of P*Q part because there is no any revenue from a crypto-network (speculations shouldn’t be counted here). Considering this we will continue to make assumptions in order to imagine possible ways the project could progress, and which aspects it’s good to focus on.

Q = 2 092 203 (Total amount of tellers/users

P = 42 DTH (Price for one license)=$1.7

V = 4 and 15 (Extremes for M1 money when token isn’t a storage of value, accordingly James Kilroe)

M $889 186.275 x V 4 = $1.7 x 2 092 203

M $237 116.34 x V15= $1.7 x 2 092 203

In both cases the amount of money circulation less then a million dollars upon condition of having 2 092 203 total activities. Also we can see that the higher velocity reduces amount of money in circulation.

Conclusion

Considering the statement that the token velocity increasing leads to a token price decreasing (Velocity of tokens James Kilroe), the first Dether version where the license price depends on the specific country DTH base rate increases a token circulation is not very promising because the token price will go down as a result of high velocity. Holding token and reducing velocity may increase token value.

In the next Dether release the price of the license will be pegged to fiat amount in each particular zone. Besides Dether is integrating Airswap exchange, using it people will be able to exchange their stable DAI tokens to DTH instantly, at the moment they want to trade. So they don’t have a reason to HODL.

There are several solutions that could provide necessary HODL effect to reduce the velocity the team is working on. The one it is the loyalty points system where users are stimulated to keep their token staked because it gives access to the premium services. The spectrum auction will be used to resolve visibility competition that based on loyalty points system. If a user removes his stake the loyalty points he earned will be lost.

In the given DTH token design there is a lack of incentives for a user to grow network (stimulating network effect) just as to HODL token. Viral effect from marketing will be impermanent and limited by mass adoption factor, so it better to add more incentives features to DTH token.

Currently, it’s difficult to evaluate the potential value of the network based on existing methods and without a clear vision of team on crypto economy of the project. As soon as initial mainnet version will be launched Dether team will present an updated version of the whitepaper explaining all the crypto-economic principles.

Credits

coauthor Igor Line

cover picture by Alina Loseva

Follow D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium and Twitter

Sources

• Utility & Economics of the Dether Token
• Dether Private Presale Results
• How to buy and to sell crypto coins without a bank account or why Dether goes mass?
• The Token Classification Framework: A multi-dimensional tool for understanding and classifying crypto tokens.
• What Stellar Lumens Teaches Us About Token Economics
• MV=P…Que? Love and Circularity in the Time of Crypto
• Velocity of Tokens
• The Power of Network Effects: Why they make such Valuable Companies, and how to Harness them
• On Medium-of-Exchange Token Valuations
• Cryptoasset Valuations

Dether DTH token review / Crypto-economic analysis was originally published in D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

About FOAM

FOAM aims to build the first decentralized and trusted map of the world. FOAM is a multicomponent project consists of three levels:

1.The FOAM Crypto-Spatial Coordinate (CSC) — the protocol with the geohash standard as a basis, enabling smart contracts on Ethereum communicate with each other about location.

2. The Spatial Index and Visualizer (together, the “SIV”) — serves as a front-end interface to Dapps that are built above the FOAM protocol, visualizes smart contracts’ info on the map. The design allows users to interact with the Ethereum blockchain and to work with smart contracts from the web browser.

3. The Proof of Location solution (POL) provides the framework for the new decentralized, highly accurate, secure and censorship-resistant alternative to GPS. FOAM POL bootstraps the crypto economy ecosystem of Dapps built on the top of it.

To know more about the new geospatial standard and FOAM implementation check the article “Can FOAM replace GPS and Google maps with new geospatial standard for Ethereum blockchain?”

FOAM main features

Trustless: Byzantine fault-tolerant clock synchronization

Independent: Does not rely on GPS

Open: Anyone can utilize the network or offer utility services

Accountable: Economy is structured to ensure honest behavior, verified with fraud proofs

Incentivized: Service providers are rewarded for extending localization and zones’ verification

Source

Static and Dynamic Proof of location

At the current stage, FOAM uses the Static Proof of Location (SPOL) on the Ethereum Proof of Work Consensus. The SPOL is the process of mapping Points of Interest’ data using Token Curated Registries.

In the long term FOAM is preparing to implement the Dynamic Proof of location (DPOL)- the solution we are going to focus in this article due to its interesting consensus choice.

DPOL is currently based on a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technology which uses beacons like LoRa to define and verify location. Such a beacon serves as a Zone Anchor, four or more of them triangulate and verify location, forming a Zone by that. Zones are run by Zone operators (both verifiers and anchors) in the FOAM network.

In order to become a Zone operator and participate in verifying locations, and earn this way, an applicant should stake some token amount on the Ethereum blockchain (Parent Chain). Zone operator will lose his stake in case of malicious intents to falsify data — slashing conditions.

Each zone forms its own blockchain, called Child chain. This way FOAM solves scalability issues of Parent chain (Ethereum).

The network’s growth meanwhile is provided by FOAM token as a crypto-economic incentives.

The consensus of FOAM Dynamic Proof of Location

FOAM is going to implement Tendermint consensus algorithm for Child chains. It’s a Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus algorithm based on a Proof of Stake design.

The description of the process below is taken from the article Consensus Compare: Casper vs. Tendermint

Tendermint works as a round-based voting mechanism which makes the consensus protocol and begins with a set of validators.

Validators maintain a full copy of the blockchain and are identified by their public keys. They take turns proposing blocks at each new block height. There is at most one proposer per voting round. Each proposal is signed by a validator’s corresponding private key so that the validator responsible for it can be identified if some failure were to occur. The rest of the validators then vote on each proposal, signing their votes with their private keys. This is a single round described. It may take several rounds before a new block is committed because the Tendermint requires that more than ⅔ of the validators voted to proceed. Here is a weak spot of the consensus — the network may halt by reason of ⅓ or more of validator not voted.

Tendermint guarantees that safety will never be violated because a validator will never commit conflicting blocks at the same height. Therefore, a Tendermint-based blockchain never forks. That reflects the FOAM priorities in secure data over the time blocks are committed.

So the consensus in a FOAM Zone will be achieved through the Tendermint as well as the incentives of sharing, the structure of voting round and updating a state machine. The ultimate goal of Zones is to provide location services, the accuracy of which depends on of the number of synced entities involved.

Please note that I am not an expert on consensus design and would love feedback on this post.

Credits:

consulting Igor Line

cover picture by Alina Loseva

Follow D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium and Twitter

Sources:

FOAM technical paper (draft)

• Introduction to Proof of Location
• Introduction to Proof of Location
• The Difference Between Static and Dynamic Proof of Location
• Consensus Systems with Ethan Buchman
• GitHub - tendermint/tendermint: ⟁ Tendermint Core (BFT Consensus) in Go
• FOAM Community Call #4 — Featuring Token Foundry
• Consensus Compare: Casper vs. Tendermint

FOAM brings consensus to a decentralized map was originally published in D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As a part of Advanced Cryptoeconomics Fellowship I will publish 10 Medium blog posts. Each of it will refer to a particular topic that is defined by BlockFellows program. My first analysis from the cycle is about the Kyodo Dapp, the observation from the Game Theory and Mechanism Design points of view.

Please note that I am not an expert on mechanism design and would love feedback on this post.

Kyodo

Kyodo Dapp — incentive tool for building crypto economy for DAO based on Impression revenue model.

Impression revenue model — is an incentive mechanism, a framework to generate individual income for members by instant pays off (tipping) for completed tasks.

The workflow that goes through Riot serves as a database for generating tasks for Kyodo. These tasks could be evaluated and tipped accordingly by other members (collaborators). Tips are taken as points, which further will be converted to a community token minted for current working period. The community token (DF in this case) — is an equivalent for a share of Decent.Fund financial assets.

Kyodo is built on the top of Colony network and has four layers: smart-contracts deployed on Ethereum network, riot bot, backend and frontend applications.

1. Smart-contracts system includes proper Kyodo smart-contract and integration with ColonyNetwork.
2. Frontend dapp serves to join the community, to track activity, to sign transaction and run governance by creating new domains, to voting on funds allocation, funds management, to distribute token to a new members.
   Via the Dapp user assigns his Riot and Ethereum address to receive a profit from the activity within DAO as tips and bounty share*.
3. Riot bot serves to track members’ activity and amount of tips they have earned within the current period. The Bot communicates with backend to keep records of members activity.
4. Backend application with mongo database cache layer is built for instant tipping and to reduce transaction cost in the Ethereum network.

Mechanism design

As an example of DAO to demonstrate Kyodo functionality the Decent.Fund is taken.

Type of the governance

Meritocracy. Merit in Kyodo is going to be represented by NFT token. In order to make a decision a member should have NFT token.

Meritocracy is the idea that decisions should be taken by the entities better qualified for it. Xavi Vives

A set of players

Manager — anyone belongs to domain
Worker — author of tipped action
Evaluator — any domain member with a sufficient funds amount

Fields

Are defined as domains in Colony network. So Decent.Fund have chosen four domains related the activity it’s members have: education, coding, fund management, governance.

Payoff

Member gets a bigger stake while participating in the DAO activity.

Member gets access to domains with valuable information and qualified collaborators.

Member gets merit and a power to participate in Governance domain (decision making)

Member became a part of unique community and able to build a project together with the community specialists in a decentralized fashion.

Token usage

NFT token is going to be used as merit. Due to the nature of this type tokens is’s represents the inherent right to make a decision under the certain domain. NFT token is going to be distributed by the members of the Governance domain.

DF token — the certain amount of Decent.Fund token is required to get the access to a domain. By entering into a domain, a member receives the specific points amount which is equivalent to DF token balance of a member. A member can spend point by tipping others, gain points by accomplishing a task. All the earned point will be converted to DF token by the end* of a period and increase the member asset.

Period*- the time line while tips are collecting. By the end of period tips are recalculated into tokens and sent as a bounty to a members.

Non zero sum game

The gain of one member doesn’t come at the expense of other member. On the contrary, member gets a bigger stake if other members of a community are being active and getting more points.

The Nash equilibrium

As the activity generates the pot (Fund), more activity means bigger pot — the optimal strategy is develop the community and incentivise members to participate in tasks. So Kyodo builds a system of incentives that suppose to reconcile social and individual goals — here is the equilibrium takes place.

Incentives

Instant tipping. At the beginning of a period, every member receives a certain amount of tokens so they can reward others. The amount of that tokens is equal to Decent token balance member has at the beginning of a period.

Proof of activity. Final token distribution is defined by the amount of tips received by a member and represents the share of the community fund.

A member receives a share of new-issued tokens within a certain period. The size of a share depends on the amount of earned tokens in a specific domain and a rate of a reward set for a particular domain.

Estimated earnings within domain:

Domain bounty size: * Tips received / (Total tips within period * Tipping compensation coefficient)

Sources

• Kyodo — “You decide your own level of involvement”
• A Crash Course in Mechanism Design for Cryptoeconomic Applications
• What is Cryptocurrency Game Theory: A Basic introduction
• Broken meritocracy.
• In Game Theory, No Clear Path to Equilibrium
• How RewardDAO Works (aka What Are Points??)

Kyodo Dapp — incentive tool for DAO crypto economy was originally published in D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Decent.fund is the community of crypto enthusiasts. The horizontal hierarchy of Decent.Fund includes specialists of different fields (programming, design, marketing, investment, entrepreneurship) that can communicate in order to to run projects, to motivate each other, to share values from the activities. To receive desired outcome we want to define set of the rules that members are expected to follow and we need a tool to measure members’ involvement and impact for the community.

“You decide your own level of involvement” — Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

We are building a system of incentives that suppose to reconcile social and individual goals. We are building the crypto economic ecosystem for our decentralized community.

Prospecting

There are a few platform to run DAO we were trying for Decent.fund needs.

First Decent.fund was inspired by Giveth, its reward model for DAO became a prototype for our project. The instant tipping feature is based on Giveth bot. The members communicate, complete task and evaluate each other by sending tips for completed tasks instantly.

We were testing Aragon to govern Decent.fund, considered it well-designed solution to implement government: voting, token emission and distribution, creating a new domain under the Colony.

The Beta Colony was already inactive and we couldn’t test one, so we have finally gained the opportunity to deploy the platform for task management and fund distribution when the Colony hackathon came up.

As a result we’ve started to design Kyodo Dapp that could merge different features to govern a community like Decent.fund.

Kyodo

We participate in Colony Hackathon with the Kyodo Dapp — incentive tool for building crypto economy for DAO based on Impression revenue model*.

Impression revenue model — is an incentive mechanism, a framework to generate individual income for members by instant pays off (tipping) for completed tasks.

Project description

In order to achieve desired economic effect for Decent.fund we build the Dapp that merges Colony platform with the instruments we use daily.

Kyodo has four layers: smart-contracts deployed on Ethereum network, riot bot, backend and frontend applications.

1. Smart-contracts system includes proper Kyodo smart-contract and integration with ColonyNetwork. All other parts are depend on this Smart-contracts system.
2. Frontend dapp serves to join the community, to track activity, to sign transaction and run governance by creating new domains, to voting on funds allocation, funds management, to distribute token to a new members.
   We have designed and built our own user-friendly interface for the app.
   Via the Dapp user assigns his Riot and Ethereum address to receive a profit from the activity within DAO as tips and bounty share*.

Ainsley Sutherland on Twitter

I'm impressed by the quality of the "open metamask to start!" UIs that are visually appealing & clear I have been seeing lately. <3 interfaces that are respectful to the user, and... dare i say it... feel fun?! s/o to @CryptoVHumanity another great example of this! https://t.co/2Lw38GC0RZ

3. Riot bot serves to track members’ activity and amount of tips they have earned within the current period. The Bot communicates with backend to keep records of members activity.

4. Backend application with mongo database cache layer is built for instant tipping to avoid high transaction cost of posting it to the Ethereum network. The record about the activity and an amount of tips received is kept on this layer. By the end of period* a final token distribution is being propagated to the blockchain after being signed by members via frontend app.

Period*- the time line while tips are collecting. By the end of period tips are recalculated into tokens and sent as a bounty to a members.

Backend tracks user’s token balances and handle members access to specific domains. Via frontend app one, having enough token share, the member can request access to specific domain and related riot channels, or contrary might revoke his access to those.

Project structure

Colony structure supposes separation of colonies’ tasks into domains. In the case of Decent.Fund we’ve chosen four domains which are related to task specifications:

The first domain “Education”, which includes tasks related to the content Decent.fund creates as educational initiatives explaining the blockchain technology. (texts creating, social posts, media activity, design, meet ups)

The second domain “Programming” includes tasks related to building applications on the blockchain (hackathons, coding)

Smart reinvestment and overall fund management of an earned capital are the tasks for the third domain “Fund management”.

And the another group of tasks which is related to administration (voting, token emission, token distribution, members approving, new domains creating) is performed in the fourth domain “Governance”.

The share of tokens member influences the access to specific domains.

Roles in the Colony Network

Manager — anyone belonging to domain
Worker — author of tipped expression
Evaluator — any channel member with a sufficient funds amount

Crypto economy

Incentive mechanism

Tippinig. At the beginning of a period, every member receives a certain amount of tokens so they can reward others. The amount of that tokens is equal to Decent token balance member has at the beginning of a period.

Proof of activity.
Final tips’ distribution is defined by the amount of tokens from bounty the member will receive for his contribution — the share.

A member receives a share of new-issued tokens within a certain period. The size of a share depends on the amount of earned tokens in a specific domain and a rate of a reward set for a particular domain.

*This tipping point scheme complexifies MVP creation, for this reason at the current stage an equal amount of tipping points will be issued and then spent under every domain.
Bounties assignment.

Token

The decent token is based on a continuous token model used to create inflation and reduce the share of inactive members of the community and incentivize participation.

Initial allocation

The fund is backed by liquidity held on multisig wallets.
Current team of participants receive an equal share of initial supply. After that initial price of the token is defined. Some allocation might be kept for future distribution for new members.

The model of the Liquid democracy which is going to be developed with Kyodo supposes an equal distribution of the point’s amount (equal to balance) for tipping in every domain.

Example: A member has 100 DF tokens and refers to Code and Governance domains. At the start of a period, a member gets 100 GOV Points and 100 CODE Points that could be used for tipping.

Token emission via minting

Expecting mutual actions lead to funding growth in value, every period some small percentage of existing tokens are being issued and staked as a bounty. This action reduces the share of inactive members.

Every first block in period bot copies token balances of users and stores corresponding points balances.
Three days before the period ends users have to sign their allocation of points within specific domains.

Having had the idea of community and crypto economy vision, we faced some issues with building Kyodo Dapp because of the time limitation. We weren’t able to realize all the functionality we wanted so at this stage you can see the simplified tipping feature. We are continuing to work on Dapp further. Next steps are:

• Launch Beta Kyodo for internal using
• Testing hypothesises and Colony Network functionality
• Integration and layer for Aragon for governance
• Deploying own Ethereum sidechain for tipping functionality (one possible solution, is Loomx SDK) to reduce the cost of transactions in vs the mainnet. Using the sidechain is also much more secure than current MongoDB layer implementation.
• Landing page for the project
• Bot implementation for other platforms (Telegram, Slack, etc)

Thank you!

Follow D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium and Twitter to be updated for the further announcements about Kyodo.

Project participants:

Igor Line, Nastya Parygina, Nikita Kudryavtsev, Рома, Alina Loseva

Credits:

co author Igor Line

co author Nikita Kudryavtsev

logo by Alina Loseva

cover picture by Alina Loseva

ui design by Рома

edited by Masha Pipenko

Kyodo — “You decide your own level of involvement” was originally published in D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Have you ever got paid by Google for your photo or review contribution to Google maps? Have you considered your contribution to such kind of services as valuable information that should be paid?

Data is a crucial aspect of development and success of such companies as Foursquare, Facebook, Google, etc. The more data they have, the more powerful and richer they become. Data is an asset, and it’s a business model. The data broker industry generates around 200 billion USD annually without considering the interests of the people this information belongs to.

You are not their customers, therefore you are their product. — Vitalik Buterin

The Google map is created to give an advantage to advertising sellers. It doesn’t have a goal to be objective and most precise map, so it’s not.

Who controls the way the World navigates, controls the World. We definitely can say that Google controls the World with a massive presence on the web — 41% of internet users worldwide. Can we trust to a service which has been criticized in the past month for creating an “invisible web of our personal data”?

The other monopolist GPS owned by US government and operated by the US Airforce serves as a main geospatial standard for many devices. GPS is centralized and controlled by small group of people while the most accurate world clocks rely on it. Besides corruption threats, GPS could easily be tricked by some app like Fake GPS. There is too much at stake to be careless.

Tom Tom traffic, navigation and mapping products based on GPS, collected data from customers to police to catch speeding motorists. It’s a double trap of centralization.

In such a way Decentralization isn’t just a popular word, the contemporary society needs it. Being transparent and verified by many members it is an answer to corruption and systems errors. Centralized services could easily violate the owner right; meanwhile, blockchain eliminates this possibility entirely.

FOAM — the consensus-driven map of the World

What do a blockchain applications need to be connected to a map and to run Location-based decentralized services?

They need a protocol with secure, verified geospatial data to allow smart contracts to communicate with other smart contracts by using this protocol. So certain conditions will be accomplished depending on its location.

Protocol — a set of rules managing the exchange of data between devices.

FOAM is an open protocol for decentralized services based on geospatial data. FOAM connects physical space with the blockchain, uniting the Ethereum power with a cryptographic software used to provide computational work and verification to the network. FOAM token economy motivates users to build a consensus-driven map of the World that every application can trust to.

There hasn’t been such protocol before FOAM. FOAM brings geospatial standard to a blockchain that smart contracts can communicate to each other about location.

User 💼 :

Imagine you are in the new big city, not knowing anyone who you can trust to. You need to find an apartment to live because you have just been transferred from another country due to a new position.

You are in one of the most fraudulent city which is famous for its real estate agents who rent out one apartment multiple times receiving the money from newcomers. The government is corrupted, and the police share the profit with agents.

Some Dapp for real estate based on FOAM can quickly resolve this problem. The smart rent contract can be signed to this particular location just one time, and then this info will be stored in blockchain that nobody can change it.

Who benefits from the usage of FOAM protocol?

A new geospatial standard is enabling to deploy smart contracts for the effective functioning of different kinds of Dapps above FOAM standard.

Dapp — decentralized application running on the blockchain.

Many areas would benefit from using FOAM protocol.
For example, 🚚supply chain industry and logistics would benefit from tracking of parcels and overall distributed manufacturing processes. ⚡Energy markets might use FOAM to store energy within the area and measure usage with higher-precision. 🏡 Real estate would become less fraudulent due to blockchain ownership and document tracking. ⛳ Also the future of the location-based games is going to be mesmerizing with FOAM.

Why is FOAM an economic incentive?

While Google maps offer badges of different shapes depending on the number of contributions (five-pointed star for 50 reviews and 10 pointed stars for 10000 reviews), FOAM maps support user actions by rewarding with FOAM tokens which could be changed to any currency anytime.

TCR — Token-curated registries are decentrally curated lists with intrinsic economic incentives for token holders to curate the list’s contents judiciously. Mike Goldin

FOAM token is used as TCR token to build highly relevant list for the protocol. In the FOAM case, the map is a list of places of the interest (POI) staked by FOAM TCR tokens and recorded to the FOAM protocol.

FAOM token holders become Cartographers, they can participate in a building of more precise, relevant and secure map of their area by curating, mapping and verifying locations of static objects using FOAM TCR token and earn FOAM token as well.

FOAM Benefits briefly

• Decentralized, as a result, more secure and without a single point of failure, which is the problem of centralized services.
• Three times higher accuracy compared to civil GPS, up to 1 sq. m. precision finally allows us indoor mapping.
• Relevant and constantly updated due to economic incentives and user engagement.
• Technology agnostic means that all the renovated hardware technologies will be compatible with FOAM protocol.
• Trusted historical data according to the immutability of the blockchain.

Ultimately FOAM brings an opportunity to gain control over your footprint data. Locations is a fundamental block to the decentralized web of tomorrow. It’s crucial to have an ability to share this information with whom you want and when you want it.

How is the FOAM map verified?

We can see that the decentralized maps will be very welcomed in the future, but they have their issues. Community driven maps data like OpenStreetMap can be edited by anyone without verifying. Decentralized maps also suffer from vandalism in it’s all different forms.

FOAM has a solution — proof of location using FOAM TCR token. FOAM calls it Static Proof of Location. The goal of the FOAM is to create the most accurate and relevant map with the latest data.

FOAM TCR token model is an instrument against fraudulent actions by making the act of vandalism nonprofitable and risky for dirty players.

FOAM Consensus driven map of the World consists of the Places Of Interest which are added by candidates and approved by cartographers as a result of the voting process.

How to participate in building FOAM map?

Security deposit of FOAM tokens is required to participate, because the faulty behavior is detected by a node, the deposited tokens, in this case, it will be destroyed and forfeited (‘slashed’).

In Static Proof of Location, the only way to get tokens is beside purchasing them on exchanges is to participate in challenges and to be on the winning side.

There are three roles in Static Proof of location.
A user — the one who uses the map.
A candidate — the one who wants to add the point with certain geospatial data to the map.
A cartographer — the one decides if the point is relevant for the list.

For example:
A citizen wants to add a park to the FOAM map, so he deposits FOAM token to this location. The process of adding POI could go several paths as you can see in the picture below.

Depending on cartographers’ votes the park will or won’t be added to the FOAM map. The winner side gets a reward in FOAM tokens.

FOAM token holders can increase the rating of a cafe by adding a token to the deposit of this cafe. Value of the token can be increased depending on growing participant lists and raise the status of the cafe.

Current status of FOAM

FOAM has already released its Beta version. Installed Metamask is required for using FOAM. Also you will need some Rinkeby ether for using the Beta.

The FOAM token sale will take place this summer. FOAM token sale terms follow the Brooklyn Project framework, which supposes no bonuses, no bounties, no presale advantages. FOAM tokens will be distributed 28 days after the sale ends. Before you can transfer any FOAM Tokens, you will be required to use a portion of them at least once, to add a POI to the FOAM map, for example. This action is called Proof Of Use and going to be a barrier to a speculative token games.

Proof Of Use — Cartographers (i.e. FOAM token holders) will be required to add one geographic point of interest to the FOAM by applying to the token curated registry with the minimum deposit of 10 FOAM tokens.

Future of FOAM

Next step is to implement Dynamic Proof of location. FOAM zone operators will manage the red of decentralized beacons that will offer secure location services through time synchronization. FOAM Zone operators receive network fee and reward in FOAM tokens providing their services comparable to work of Bitcoin miners.

Further, in the future, your cryptokitties or your ID could be connected to the FOAM map. To make it possible the team is going to implement Non-fungible token (NFT) within protocol that is also trending now.

Non-fungible — Non substitutable, standard protocol for Ethereum is ERC721 token.

Give yourself data-detox, go and check beta FOAM ! 👉🏿 👉🏽🚀

Check your Google privacy check up BTW, you might be surprised by what data your share to the World.

• FOAM
• f-o-a-m/public-research

Follow D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium and Twitter

Credits:

co author Igor Line

infographics by Рома

cover picture by Alina Loseva

consulting Phil Sevostianov

consulting Nikita Kudryavtsev

edited by Masha Pipenko

Sources:

FOAM Whitepaper

Find Out What Google and Facebook Know About You by Baratunde Thurston

Google Users — You’re The Product, Not The Customer

Token-Curated Registries 1.0 By Mike Goldin

The Emergence of Cryptoeconomic Primitives by Jacob Horne

Non Fungible Tokens by Julien Genestoux

Can FOAM replace GPS and Google maps with new geospatial standard for Ethereum blockchain? was originally published in D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s so human to create an analog of pets for the crypto world. There is an irresistible desire for something completely useless, adorable, collectible and the pain in the ass at the same time.

At least, no one in “Unchained” world can say that the crypto world doesn’t have a soul. It seems that every blockchain is going to have its crypto creatures.

Cryptokitties — the first most popular Mainnet DApp.

“Mainnet” — the main network wherein actual transactions take place on a distributed ledger; and the Testnet, where new Dapps can be tested and developed.

DApp — decentralized application

Cryptokitties — a blockchain-based multiplayer game where you can buy a Cryptokitty, in case if you are lucky to breed some rare type, you can sell on the marketplace with a higher price. The prices are based on kitty’s features fashion and their rarity. The most expensive kitty was sold for 250 ETH ($100+K). The more unique and scarcity the kitty is, the higher value it has. Every kitty is represented in Ethereum blockchain as a token with unique data, a non-fungible token ERC721 standard.

I bet now you understand why it’s so popular, because you can make money on it. Thanks to smart contracts Ethereum’s ecosystem is very favorable to this kind of games.

More games like this are coming to Ethereum. For example, Axie Infinity another crypto asset game which besides selling, buying and breeding, allows to grow and train your pet for a peer-to-peer battle.

Neo blockchain as well as Ethereum uses smart contracts ecosystem, it also expects NEO crypto creatures - HashPuppies.

HashPuppies is a mix of CryptoKitties and Axie Infinity. You can breed, sell, raise and train your puppy, but as creators say it will be better/faster/cheaper considering NEO blockchain qualities.

Scalability is blockchains’ common issue or Cryptokitties as Ethereum possible killer

Any blockchain is able to process a limited number of transactions per second (TPS).

TPS — transaction per second, one of the main key performance indicators (KPI)of the payment process.

Bitcoin blockchain is currently capable of processing up to 7 TPS, Ethereum up to 15 TPS, Neo supposedly up to 1000 TPS. Meanwhile, current centralized payment methods consistently handle higher TPS: Paypal -155, Visa — 2000.

CryptoKitties look innocent however they sometimes sabotage Ethereum network. From time to time a transaction cost increases up to 10 or 20 times. That means due to user activity peaks transactions are queued to be processed by a miner. Sometimes waiting/pending could last for too long and a user has to increase a cost of transaction to be chosen by a miner, to succeed.

For example, in December of 2017 due to incredible CryptoKitties usage, many Ethereum based ICOs experienced the critical situation and had to postpone their token sales. The ETH blockchain was suffering from the overload since CryptoKitties transactions are about 10% — 13% of all transactions. That’s huge! The law procession speed is similar to traffic in a rush hour in a big city. Imagine also that a blockchain doesn’t only provides the payment, but it also offers high-security level with multiplied proof of transaction. That means every inrush of the transaction due to whatever ICO or crypto pets baby boom will lead to collapse.

As a result of the cryptokittie’s baby boom, the transactions fees increased significantly. Ethereum users were forced to pay up to 300$ fee and more for one transaction to be chosen by a miner, who could have preferred to give birth to a new crypto toy for a higher commission instead of providing an ordinary payment service. Transaction price rose 100 times in the year 2017.

These factors will never allow the crypto world to merge with a reality of fiat money. If the cost of transaction is too high, nobody will pay such a fee.

Blockchain scaling solutions

However the newborn crypto economy will survive. Geeks all over the world successfully compete in resolving this problem for the better future. Every blockchain has its solution:

Lightening Network for Bitcoin.

Raiden for Ethereum.

Trinity for Neo.

Trinity is Neo life-saver

Based on the example of Trinity we will explain how the operational principle of the scalability solution works. We chose Trinity because of its positioning as a cutting-edge technology and close release on the Neo mainnet in late of April.

Trinity successfully deals with possible chaos caused by pending transactions by bringing the state channels to Neo blockchain. It means that participants can connect with each other beyond blockchain making micro transactions faster and cheaper, avoiding intermediate transactions within blockchain.

Trinity creates a channel between a cryptopet’s player and a game. Player opens a payment channel, making a deposit to cover game credit and trinity service commission when a game starts. Users can operate their deposit within the opened payment channels with much smaller or for free. It means you can breed, sell and give birth without paying fee every time. Trinity requests commission two times, when a contract opens and closes. Only these two transactions are being fixed in the NEO blockchain. All operations during the game are processed in the Trinity payment channel and get recorded at one time to the Neo when a contract closes. Then a player receives leftover in one’s wallet. It is an excellent way to save money and to became the best player.

TPS will also increase exponentially. Trinity + Neo speed is going to be 80000–100000 TPS on the start. Cryptopets’ fans will appreciate this ;)

Such a solution brings new perspectives to Dapps. Scaling used to be a real problem, but now there is a chance for the Crypto World.

Have a nice baby pet! 🐶 🐱 🐭 🐹 🐰 🐻 🐼 🐨 🐯 🦁 🐮 🐷 🐽 🐸 🐙 🐵

Trinity is going to focus on a blockchain based games.

Follow us on Medium and Twitter.

Co-authors are Igor Line

Infographics design by Alina Loseva.

Redaction by Masha Pipenko

Can CryptoKitties be an apocalypse for a blockchain? How Trinity will rescue the Crypto World. was originally published in D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Do you think it’s easy to buy and sell Ethereum or Bitcoin without a bank account? You might suppose that there is a significant amount of options because the cryptocurrency symbolizes borderless economy by itself. However, it is almost impossible for unbanked individuals. Imagine that 2 billion adults worldwide still don’t have a bank account, though many of them dream of entering to the crypto world where there are no currency barriers and anyone can participate in the crypto economy, developing their projects or taking part in ICO.

Even if you have a bank account, you might still have problems buying cryptocurrency, and you can face the lack of solutions in case if you have an urge to buy Ethereum right here right now. By the time the person has an opportunity to buy ETH, the prices can increase dramatically. The last one is the most common scenario for the bank-exchange communication. The whole process of transferring money into a bank account / sending it to the exchange / buying cryptocurrency may take at least three days if it’s not a weekend. Don’t you think it’s bizarre that electronic transactions have days off? Besides the exchange can be offline due to Meltdown attack.

Cryptocurrency trading platforms’ compare

Here is the comparison table which indicates the main crypto services’ merits. It simplifies a decision-making process and filters out the options that don’t meet relevant criteria. Keep in mind there are other grey zone services that I don’t consider due to questionable legitimacy.

Bitcoin ATM is like a real unicorn. My friend says that his friend knows one guy who has seen it once. Also, it has a high commission rate they say. So we can not consider it as a convenient solution.

Another way to spot a private buyer or seller is using LocalBitcoin or LocalEthereum services with a limited variety of tokens, naturally, high exchange rate, without geolocation.

If you are lucky to have a friend who is a real expert in crypto and he already created the successful portfolio, so you can ask him to do the same for you. But he is still human; he doesn’t have everything you might be interested in.

Dether leads to Ethereum mass adoptation

Dether is an Ethereium based dApp implementing the P2P exchange of ETH and ERC-20 tokens for cash and trading of goods and services in physical stores.

There are several advantages of Dether over existing options:

• Exchange quickly with other people for cash in local currency where you are
• Progressive web app with friendly user interface and map search
• Trusted buyers and sellers with global rating and verified accounts
• Safe communication through instant, secure messenger
• Safe trading using smart contracts system and public places
• Funds are kept on the seller’s wallet until the exchange is made

Dether’s function is to help anyone to participate in the crypto economy. Maybe it’s Dether that is the next breakthrough in the cryptocurrency world, which allows better interaction between merchants and customers.

Dether was created to help the public to adapt ETH by creating functional space and robust business environment. There are many exciting features that Dether offers for local businesses that are willing to trade goods and services for crypto and do cash to currency exchange:

• Locate your shop on the Dether map
• Expand your visibility on map and reserve keywords using loyalty points earned from trading
• Convert cryptocurrency to fiat currency to prevent volatility

Dether’s Token economy

“The utility role of the token is a primary consideration in the success of the models that intend to exploit their powers.”

William Mougayar — Dether’s advisor

The ecosystem of Dether is based on Ethereum ERC223 standard ÐTH tokens which incentivize network participants and increases market safety.

Ethereum network is used due to several reasons:

1. Smart contracts to run the system for security
2. Believe for a growing demand for easy access to ETH and ERC-20 tokens
3. General adoption of the protocol

To start trading Dether users need to stake in a minimum amount of ÐTH tokens, depending on the expected monthly trading volume sellers would need to stake in more.

Depending on the number of trades in ETH being made merchants and shops are receiving loyalty points that might be exchanged for Dether’s premium services. Such as booking of search keywords and “owning” of map areas with the specific zoom level in app.

To increase visibility on the map users are bidding with loyalty points in an auction for a given period. A user with higher bid is holding area or a keyword on the map. Every period percentage of loyalty points is being burnt from this time contract.

ÐTH’s owners are also incentivized to be a part of affiliate/referral program and build decentralized business community. It proves that the intentions of the Dether’s team in building trusted ecosystem are sincere and honest.

Dether is planning integration with other DApps which need to get exchange of ether/tokens and cash. Usage of token for access to Dether network is more transparent rather than creating centralized payment API for third-parties.

Utility & Economics of the Dether Token

Dether’s Team and advisors

The team behind requires special attention. Dether’s co-founders are Paris based specialists and entrepreneurs connected by blockchain community. Some of them have Algerian background, so they have a deep understanding of the third world countries’ problems — very limited number of the ways to enter into the crypto world.

Dether’s advisors are respected people in the business blockchain field. One of them William Mougayar who wrote a book a “The business blockchain” together with the Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. William is also Token Summit producer. Another one is Eddy Travia, a pioneer investor in blockchain technology start-ups. Among the companies, he led his investments are Factom, RSK, SatoshiPay, Minebox, CoinDash, and Indorse.

Dether’s current progress status

The platform is currently available in kovan testnet as a progressive web app in Chrome on Android and in Safari for iOS. Recently Dether developed an open source javascript library to interact with its contract easily and launched Toshi app bot as an example implementation.

Further steps

• Mainnet launch in Q1 2018
• ERC-20 Token trading integration
• RSK Integration to trade BTC

Dether’s ICO details

• Token type: ERC-223 standard compatible ÐTH token
• Total token supply: 100.000.000 ÐTH max
• Hard cap on crowdsale (60%): 15000 ETH
• Collected on presale: 3956 ETH (with average of 14.7% of bonus locked up)
• Accepted currency: ETH
• Whitelist applied 25000 and accepted 3368
• Individual cap: 4ETH max (first 48hours)
• Price per 1 ETH: 4000 DTH (if hard cap is reached)
• Crowdsale date: February 7th 2pm (UTC+1)

Decent.fund look towards mass adoption of Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens usage in 2018. Dether seems to be the right product with the excellent team involved in that process, and we are happy to be one of its six early backers.

Follow us on Medium and Twitter.

Co-authors are Igor Line, Infographics design by Alina Loseva.

How to buy and to sell crypto coins without a bank account or why Dether goes mass? was originally published in D E C E N T . F U N D on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.