Nodle Network Updated Tokenomics v1.1 Release Date July 28th, 2022 — Part 4 of 4

Welcome to part four and final of a four-part series covering Nodle’s updated tokenomics documentation, which was released on July 28th, 2022. In Part Four of the series, you will learn more about Smart Missions’ role in bringing people and businesses together using Proof of Connectivity.

Missions at the Edge

Within eight years of the network’s existence, the issuance marks an inflection point: the theoretical limit at which the growth of the total network rewards issued for nodes will start slowing down as Smart Missions on the network outpace them.

Smart Missions stem from a massive pool of use cases broadly described as swarm computing. In the first years of its existence, it is expected that the network will be used primarily by the IoT industry, providing connectivity to smart devices at the edges. Essentially, the network leverages nodes to connect things with things. As of 2022, the network is also seeing developments to leverage its ability to connect things with people through nodes, where people are the owners of the smartphones acting as the nodes.

Most Smart Missions will rely on a specific feature of the Nodle network: Proof of Connectivity.

The Economy of Mission Builders​

Smart Missions are written and deployed on the Nodle Parachain. They are open-source and can be reused. Nodle Service Providers who create services on top of the chain can write their Smart Missions or reuse existing ones published by mission builders.

Mission builders are developers who write code for Smart Missions. As they create this code, they can include royalties to be paid as their code is used, enabling an economy for Smart Mission builders. Some Smart Missions will likely have royalties, and others will not, all in the spirit of the free software movement.

It is expected that revenue generated by some Smart Missions will decrease until they disappear. Some NSPs will reuse them to accelerate their service creation but will internalize and rewrite the Smart Mission after a while. Being the first to write code that develops the ecosystem creates value, which is rewarded but does not automatically create annuities on the network indefinitely. Other Smart Missions will rely on access to specific resources accessible only by the mission builder, which means that copying it will not provide the same value as the original mission. In the long run, these mission builders will enable revenue for themselves without needing to set up their own NSP and deal with customers for that NSP.

A Decentralized Network for IoT​

Compared to 5G networks or dedicated Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) provided by telecom operators (which include technologies such as LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, or Sigfox), the Nodle network generates no cost to deploy new hardware infrastructure. It thus creates an economically viable long-term opportunity to connect a new array of devices, including pallets, vehicles, packages, meters, containers, actuators, cameras, and sensors.

Until now, companies with major logistics challenges (e.g., transportation, delivery, distribution, urban services such as waste management, water or energy supply, traffic monitoring, and stock optimization) could only connect devices carrying high economic value. The smartphone infrastructure also enables use cases inherent to its properties: because edge nodes are mobile, one edge node can provide connectivity to devices along their whole journey — for example, tracking a package entails a handful of smartphones, whereas a fixed network would require antennas in all areas crossed by the package.

Because edge nodes follow population density, it scales in urban areas, whereas 5G networks need to deploy thousands of antennas in such areas. This network has worldwide coverage (no roaming), high bandwidth, high precision from the smartphone’s geolocation, and the Nodle virtual machine’s potential to execute code at each node to interact with your devices.

The Asset Tracking Contract​

The first dApp to run on top of the Nodle Network is an asset tracking service provided by the Nodle team, currently (July 2022) in closed beta. Partners of Nodle provide a fleet of smart devices they own, communicating through Bluetooth Low Energy. This provisioning takes the form of a Smart Mission, where the organization controlling the smart device creates a bounty for interacting with the device. With asset tracking, the bounty specifies the data to be gathered (the payload defined in the iBeacon specification encapsulates the encrypted identifier of the device along with its geo-location provided by the Nodle Network), as well as the reward for capturing the data. Various use cases will value different frequencies and timeframes for gathering data. The reward is defined in the Smart Mission to take it into account. Each node running the SDK at the edge can access the Smart Mission, including the list of target nodes and their rewards, and pick the missions they want to participate in. Edge nodes frequently performed BLE scans to identify the target devices through their payload. Once located, the data is sent back to the owner of the device, along with the Proof of Connectivity, through an API. If the Proof of Connectivity is valid, the payment is delivered from the Smart Mission to the node. Beyond asset tracking, the Nodle Network will become an open ecosystem for innovation at the edge. Any IoT developer will have the tools to write Smart Missions on the chain that will then be executed at the edge by the network nodes, enabling complex interactions between smart devices and the nodes through the Nodle Virtual Machine.

Using Proof of Connectivity to Bring People Together​

IoT connects machines to machines and things to things. Through smartphones and apps such as the Nodle App in which users consent to connect to the network, Nodle can also connect things to humans or humans to humans, creating a new category of demand. The Proof of Connectivity guarantees that the connection happened. Without Proof of Connectivity, most of the following use cases are purely marketing, in which users are ignorant of what happens backstage, becoming “the product” in an exchange of value between an advertiser and a publisher. With Proof of Connectivity, users become economic players.

Use Cases Include:

• Foot traffic through direct payment: the client of the service is a business that wants to increase foot traffic. It pays the user in NODL for coming to their place. If the brand is strong enough, it can reward the user with NFTs for their value as a unique work of art or as the key to a loyalty program. The proof of connectivity is established between a smart device set up by the business owner or a QR code scanned by the user.
• Sponsored activities and event management: the client of the service is an event organizer who wants to provide a unique conference experience to their attendees. Example: a crypto project intends to sponsor a conference and airdrop digital goodies’ to the attendees. When the attendees purchase a ticket, they receive an NFT from the conference organizer on their Nodle app wallet. The sponsors of the conference have added benefits to the NFT, such as a NODL allowance.
• Proof of Participation (PoP): The clients of this service are the ones who get paid, and the participants are the ones who pay in NODL while they earn a PoP. For example, a street performer wants to get paid for playing guitar when people enjoy her music. The street performer uses the Nodle Cash app to create an “Activity” labeled “Guitar Street performance” at a specific location. People can earn a PoP NFT if they are around and thus reward the performer.

These use cases draw the picture of an ecosystem for Nodle that goes well beyond IoT. The Nodle network creates an economical and technical framework to enable secure and private digital connection between any physical entity, whether a thing or a person, through the network’s nodes.

View the complete Tokenomics.

About Nodle

Nodle connects the physical world to Web3 by using smartphones as edge nodes. The edge nodes read devices and sensors in the physical world using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and connect that information to the blockchain. Creating a geolocation-based layer one that can be used by many unique applications built for the hyper-connected, mobile-oriented world we live in, including real-time asset tracking. Nodle creates an economic model that is secure, private, and scalable. Anyone with a smartphone can join the network in return for Nodle Cash tokens ($NODL). Nodle provides insights for consumer electronics manufacturers, enterprises, smart cities, the finance industry and beyond. Since its creation in 2017, Nodle has become one of the world’s largest wireless networks by number of base stations. To join, download the Nodle app for iOS or Android.

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