Aug 24, 2021
Welcome to KONG Land
The world’s first-ever cryptostate that brings the metaverse into the real world.
Long before Neal Stephenson officially coined the term “Metaverse” in his 1992 sci-fi classic, Snow Crash, we’ve long chased the dream of experiencing and interacting with virtual worlds. It’s only been in recent history, however, with the tremendous advancements in VR/AR, network, and crypto technologies that a true vision of the metaverse has come into focus. And it’s not just the geeks and gamers who see it. Mainstream audiences are also taking notice, with “Metaverse” becoming a more frequent search term and investment buzzword.
Additionally, an increasing number of tech companies are shifting their focus to the metaverse to ensure their piece of the virtual pie, which Bloomberg recently estimated at $800 billion. This includes Facebook which recently announced that they’re shifting from a social media company to become “a Metaverse company.”
Despite the recent hype, much like blockchain technology, the metaverse is still in its infancy. While traditional tech companies focus largely on bringing users into virtual worlds or augmenting reality with digital experiences, we envision a seamlessly intertwined metaverse that doesn’t rely solely on wearable headgear. Also, unlike traditional tech that wants to create walled gardens within the networks they fully control, we believe in an open metaverse that belongs to its free citizens.
Founding KONG Land
KONG Land is an experimental cryptostate with a mission to bridge the physical world to the digital metaverse through global adoption of its public good, SiLos (or Silicon Locked Contracts). SiLos radically change the UX of self-custodial crypto from technically challenging to immediately understandable and usable. Like any other country, KONG Land has citizenship requirements, a unique culture, a working government (a “DAO of DAOs”), and a robust economy built on creating and exporting SiLo-factured cryptoassets.
At inception, KONG Land will exist as a cloud country whose citizens work together to export cryptoassets for projects across varied industries like stablecoins, identity, fashion, and art. SiLo chips will be available to projects that supply a portion of their governance tokens to the KONG Land treasury. With sufficient funding, KONG Land will continue to invest in secure physical cryptoasset research, explore new goods to export, and ways to grow the cryptostate in both digital and physical domains to benefit its citizens.
What is a “DAO of DAOs”?
KONG Land is a cryptostate governed by its citizens and composed of a collective of DAOs with the common goal of exporting physical cryptoassets to make crypto ubiquitous. DAOs may focus on unique products and problems, and will likely have different capital and community involvement needs. DAOs with aligned goals may share labor and resources, and all DAOs will have the ability to request funding from the shared treasury.
KONG Land DAOs will physically manifest themselves through real-world interactions with real world communities and traditional corporations. For example, they may work with tradcorp suppliers in order to source raw materials needed to produce cryptoasset exports or work with local currency projects to deploy flatcoins. Eventually, we envision that KONG Land might own physical properties where citizens can interact IRL and live.
SiLo + real-world item = cryptoasset
SiLos are a low-cost, durable, secure element cryptographically linked to a smart contract. Each chip self-generates a key pair, the public portion of which is added to a KONG registry contract. Using a smartphone, anyone can scan the SiLo via NFC to verify the private key and unlock access to the tokenized assets stored in the contract, authenticate an identity, or even trigger real-world actions. Embedding a SiLo into a physical item transforms it into a cryptoasset that can be verified on chain, as well as interacted with in real life.
If you attended a Devcon or EthCC event in the last two years, you might be familiar with KONG.cash. KONG Cash is the first instance of a SiLo in the form of cryptocash — a physical bill imbued with a cryptocurrency. Once loaded, KONG notes are freely exchangeable, just like cash, and a quick smartphone tap can easily verify their authenticity and value.
Cryptocash notes have time-locks that restrict the separation of their associated cryptocurrency from the physical bill until a certain date. While KONG notes were loaded with $KONG token, any crypto project can use the same framework to create a physical bill imbued with their token.
Use cases for SiLo tech — we’re just getting started
Imagine if the jacket you’re wearing could unlock exclusive metaverse experiences in the real world, or if you could use a rare collector’s item as collateral for a DeFi loan. These SiLos exist today as KONG Land exports, thanks to the collaboration we’ve begun with MetaFactory and Mattereum.
These use cases are just the tip of the iceberg — with the collaboration of an entire nation of KONG citizens, together, we will SiLo-facture more cryptoassets to export the metaverse.
KONG Land welcomes you to come build with us
- Are you a painter, photographer or sculptor who wants to create physical crypto art?
- Do you have a physical product or brand you wish to connect into the metaverse?
- Are you looking to introduce a cryptocurrency to all corners of the world?
- Do you run events and want to drop cryptoassets to your attendees?
- Do you want to share crypto with friends and family?
We invite you to join the KONG Land Discord and forum to get more involved in KONG Land or to gain deeper technical knowledge about how to create using SiLos.
Acquire Founding Citizenship
While KONG Land citizenship will never be capped, the first 500 citizenship tokens, identified as $CITIZEN, are a special class of founding citizenship — Alpha $CITIZENs. Like Punks and $SOCKs, Alpha $CITIZENs are the first of their kind and will be forever etched onto crypto history as the earliest KONG Land pioneers.
Redemption of $CITIZEN will unlock physical and crypto assets:
- An Alpha KONG Land Passport with the first sovereign KONG Land embedded in it — real meteorite dust (yes, from outer space ☄️)
- An Alpha NFT with unique characteristics that distinguish each one 🖼️
- Access to $CITIZEN-only forums on Discord 🔐
- Regular high-fives for being the first citizens of KONG Land and paving the way for future Konglandian generations 🙏
Claiming the Passport (which will be mailed to you) and the NFT will require the redemption of your $CITIZEN token through burning. Redemption is not yet enabled, so be sure to follow this blog and our Twitter (@Kongiscash) for updates.
You can become a KONG Land citizen by visiting KONG.land and purchasing a $CITIZEN token. The price of the token is dynamic based on current supply and demand. As limited chip supplies for Passports allow, additional tokens will be minted to admit new citizens to KONG Land.
Make Metaverse History
We are incredibly encouraged by the enthusiastic reception we received after announcing KONG Land, and the influx of enthusiastic Alpha $CITIZENs joining our Discord. United in citizenship, we can’t wait to work hand in hand with everyone to build KONG Land’s future and forge unprecedented metaverse history together. 🤝
“Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part…and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”
-Robert A. Heinlein
Follow this blog for project updates and join the community:
- Acquire citizenship: KONG.land
- Follow us on Twitter: @Kongiscash
- Chat us with on Discord: Kong Land
- Join the discussion: forum.KONG.land
- Get in touch about using Silos in your product: arx.org
