TCR: State of the Union
Hunter Gebron, Director of Strategic Initiatives, MetaX
The adChain Github TCR repo has been forked 110 times. There are a number of projects building TCR’s and experimenting with design choices. This post will take a look at the current state of TCR’s and how they are being used by a few different well-known projects in the Ethereum space.
Don’t know what a TCR (Token-Curated Registry) is? Check this out.
0x Protocol plans to use a TCR as part of its Governance Roadmap
The 0x Project built a protocol for decentralized exchanges and was the first ERC-20 token (ZRX) added to Coinbase. They plan to use a TCR as part of their governance roadmap and Co-founder
explained how “governance is critical when building public financial infrastructure on top of a rapidly evolving tech stack.”As part of their plan to transition decision-making power to ZRX token holders in 2019, the 0x Protocol is launching a TCR that will store “ERC20 token metadata (i.e symbol, name, address, decimals) that serves as a canonical on-chain reference that market participants can use to verify token addresses and exchange rates before entering into a trade.”
This transition from a centralized registry managed by the 0x team to a decentralized one maintained by token holders will be a crucial step for the 0x protocol. We look forward to their TCR implementation going live in 2019!
Foam is using a TCR for geographic Points of Interest (POI)
If smart contracts want to make a meaningful impact on the real world, they are going to need a way to reference it. Enter the Foam Protocol, a way “to provide spatial protocols, standards, and applications that bring geospatial data to blockchains and empower a consensus-driven map of the world.”
The Foam TCR went live on the Ethereum Mainnet earlier this year. Within the “FOAM Map, people curate points of interest using tokens. Anyone can add locations, validate new entries and are encouraged to verify and cross-reference the map by visiting the locations in the physical world.”
Unlocking the potential for a truly decentralized map of the world is a groundbreaking concept. Anyone can register a point of interest on the Foam TCR as long as they have the requisite tokens to do so. The implications for centralized ownership of the maps we rely on (like Google Maps) to get from A to B have far greater consequences than just getting you to your next vacation destination. When you factor in the exploding industry of IoT (Internet of Things) and combine those with GPS, it becomes a much more serious conversation about who truly owns your ability to navigate the world and monitor your whereabouts.
We applaud the Foam team for their efforts and for launching the first objective TCR on the Mainnet.
Doges On Trial takes the TCR concept and runs with it!
Brought to you by Kleros, Doges on Trial is one of the most exciting projects in use right now. It is a TCR hybrid of sorts that relies on curation from a community of token holders that challenge and apply while referencing clear objective rules for what qualifies to be on the list *hint* You must be a picture of a Doge!
It differs from traditional TCRs in the way that arbitration and disputes are settled. Doges on Trial offers a very exciting and novel adaptation that moves away from token-weighted voting and towards a juror based system. For example, if a picture is challenged by someone in the community because it’s a cat, not a Doge, then a random selection of three jurors decides the outcome. The benefits to this process are that the reward paid out to the jurors will be relatively high compared to a token-weighted voting based TCR.
We invite you to check out Doges on Trial and to play it yourself. It’s pretty fun! And kudos to the Kleros team for re-thinking the TCR concept in innovative ways.
Meme Factory: a TCR of Dank (and tradable) memes
From District0x comes a new iteration of TCR for rare and tradable Dank Memes called Meme Factory.
There is no denying the significance of memes in Internet culture. They have become synonymous with recent generations and continue to be relevant in pop-culture, the media, and everyday life. But who owns memes? And if one goes insanely viral does the original creator get anything? Likely no, and worse yet, nobody knows who the original creator is.
Meme factory is looking to solve that problem by allowing meme creators to verify ownership of their meme on the blockchain and sell it in ETH to the highest bidder. Furthermore, a secondary market will exist in parallel with the Dank Meme TCR to facilitate the trading of memes that have been purchased from the original owner. Pretty cool!
Conclusion
This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the projects using some form of a TCR. However, it does highlight some of our favorites and shows how our original work with TCRs has impacted the blockchain ecosystem!
Other projects that we are excited about are MedX and their approach to building a TCR for “procuring a registry of verifiably licensed healthcare professionals ready to service any healthcare DApp at an instant’s notice.” And Civil, the ConsenSys based project for sustainable journalism. There are also teams like LevelK that are working on modular TCR’s that allow for components to be swapped in and out with ease.
We are continually blown away by the level of ingenuity the Ethereum community has shown with regard to TCR’s and the various ways they can be constructed. adChain may have been the first TCR, but it’s clear now that the TCR floodgates are open!
