The Wikipedia Competition and The EOS Blockchain
By Blokkx Ltd. on Altcoin Academy
Blokkx Ltd. October 2019
Everipedia Relies on IQ Tokens
Everipedia is an alternative to the well-known online encyclopedia Wikipedia. However, the competition operates commercially instead of non-profit — and uses tokens based on the EOS blockchain to boost content production.
Everipedia has been around since December 2014 and was launched in January 2015 as the Wikipedia fork. To this day, many entries are based fundamentally on Wikipedia texts, but there are apparent differences in the page design. The project aims to provide the most comprehensive online encyclopedia possible, but its entries are less restrictive than those of the well-known competition.
Preventing Censorship
The makers of Everipedia specifically want to avoid the published content from becoming the victim of censorship measures. Examples are Wikipedia bans or censorship measures in countries like China, Turkey or Russia as well as the use of state-established firewalls. To avoid this problem, Everpedia uses the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) in addition to the EOS blockchain. The distributed open-source file system on a peer-to-peer basis is almost entirely safe from such measures due to its design.
Tokens as a Reward
In the summer of last year, the EOS Blockchain and an Airdrop of the in-house IQ currency were then integrated into all EOS owners. The idea behind it: Anyone who participates in Everipedia and creates content, for example, is rewarded with so-called IQ tokens. The tokens serve as a kind of participation in the platform and also enable users to vote on new articles or make changes to existing content. The tokens are currently available on various exchanges such as Bitfinex, MXC, CoinTiger or Upbit. The value, however, is now around 0.0017 euros per piece, which is very manageable. At the start of last year, an IQ token was worth around 5 US cents.
Modest Success
Everipedia is thus also suffering from the ongoing bear market, which has already pushed some Altcoins out of business. The low value of the tokens and a return on investment (ROI) of -96 per cent are neither attractive for investors nor interested users. The figures are correspondingly low: At present, the daily users of the IQ token are around 630 people, and the trading volume is also less spectacular at around half a million US dollars a day. Alexa sees the site after all among the approximately 15,000 most important global Internet offers — which is however far away from the rank 9 of the Wikipedia. Some scandals were also not very conducive to the project’s reputation: for example, several articles on current events presented false information. The best known was the inaccurate identification of an uninvolved person as a possible perpetrator of the mass murder in Las Vegas in 2017.
Looking to the Future
It is difficult to assess the future development of Everpedia. The fundamental idea of a censorship-free encyclopedia that is easily accessible worldwide is undoubted to be welcomed. Also, the reward of the participating users to achieve a closer connection to the project is an exciting concept. However, the question remains as to whether the use of a cryptocurrency is the right way to achieve this. The current low, which is a problem for almost all Altcoins, has also affected the IQ-Tokens. With the current course, it might be extremely questionable whether the remuneration with a cryptocurrency attracts new users beyond the already existing persuaders. What remains is a project with an interesting basic concept, the integration of which may not bring the desired effects to the crypto world.
