Introducing 1protocol

Welcome to the 1protocol blog!

Axel Ericsson

Published in

Vest

2 min readMay 22, 2017

Website: http://1protocol.com

Slack: http://slack.1protocol.com

Whitepaper: http://1protocol.com/whitepaper.pdf

1protocol is a platform that enables users with idle tokens and machines with idle computing power to collaboratively perform work for staking protocols on Ethereum such as Casper. Using 1protocol, users can trustlessly earn interest on their token holdings and machines can perform work for staking protocols without putting up stake. In this post, we provide a short introduction to the 1protocol project and vision. We present the project in greater detail in our whitepaper.

Market Protocols

Ethereum, IPFS, and Truebit are examples of protocols which allow Ethereum users to trustlessly purchase digital services using cryptocurrencies. For instance, on Ethereum, users pay miners Ether — through transaction fees and inflation — for the service of block production and state consensus. On IPFS, users pay workers in Filecoin to store data. Each of these protocols supports a decentralized market for a digital service. Juan Benet at Protocol Labs recently termed such protocols Market Protocols.

Staking Protocols

Market Protocols use financial incentives to ensure that anonymous workers provide digital services correctly. They generally incentivize workers by compensating them for following rules or requiring them to supply security deposits which are confiscated when a worker acts maliciously. We refer to Market Protocols that employ both strategies — such as Casper, Filecoin, and Truebit — Staking Protocols.

1protocol

We expect that many token holders will lack the hardware, reliable internet connection, or technical ability required to participate in Staking Protocols. Similarly, since Staking Protocols require deposits, we expect many workers will be unable to fully utilize their computing power. 1protocol aligns these two parties, enabling tokens holders and workers to collaboratively supply work for Staking Protocols.

Future

Casper, Filecoin, and Truebit are early instances of Staking Protocols which mediate the sale of a digital service, and we believe that eventually all digital services will be purchasable trustlessly using similar protocols. Our goal with 1protocol is to help build this future and enable Ethereum users to trustlessly and cooperatively supply digital services.

We recently left Stanford University to work on 1protocol. We would love to hear your feedback and if 1protocol can help you or your project!

Don’t hesitate to read our whitepaper or to get in touch using the email address below: