Saving the word
V Systems has partnered with Immutable DAO to make a copy of Wiktionary on the V Systems blockchain.
Precisely, we’re copying English Wiktionary onto a blockchain, for start. If project becomes popular we can easily extend the functionality to make it multilingual.
English Wiktionary is actually one of the biggest dictionaries in the word, and likely the biggest one for English language. Wikipedia cites that English edition of Wiktionary is 7th largest dictionary by number of words. English Wiktionary contains 814423 gloss definitions and 1028439 total entries. Second biggest English dictionary is Webster’s Third New International Dictionary which contains 470000 entries.
Not only that wiktionary is biggest online, biggest open source dictionary of English language, it’s the biggest English dictionary in general.
Why bother with saving a dictionary onto a blockchain?
In short because blockchain is better than a centralized database and far more portable than books. It can be querried from any internet-connected computer, worldwide. Well, except NK probably but there is always an edge case. Blockhain provides an immutable way to track word definition changes over time. So beside being a database for word definitions it is also a lookback machine which can track all the changes in definitions which occur during the time.
Languages change and evolve over time, and dictionaries follow them. For example word “satoshi” has entered Oxford dictionary only in 2019, years after it became basically essential in cryptocurrency circles. Words can also change their meaning over time, something linguists call semantic progression. For example word “nice”, used to mean “silly, foolish, simple.” Far from the compliment it is today. We’re mutating it again now with this “69 nice” thing.
Blockchain permits a permanent immutable record of a word’s meaning at a timestamped point in time, and thus deprives any party from manipulating language in order to control the narrative.
Perhaps, the blockchain is the best medium for dictionaries ever created. We just don’t know it yet because we did not try.
What about costs?
Each dictionary definition will cost one VSYS. This is not prohibitively expensive, as 1 VSYS trades for just under 0.02 USD at the time of writing. Recording entire dictionary onto the blockchain, whole 1M entires would cost just over 1M VSYS. We believe that is a reasonable cost.
Each individual user can pay for saving of words of their selection, but also donations are accepted and number of words will be saved on-chain on daily basis.
Making it more interesting
Upon saving a word, user can create an NFT token out of it. Basically, making a NFT out of proof of saving a word onto a blockchain. Such NFT would be a proof that user has saved a word into a database sometime on the past. Word NFT can then be saved into Gallery, traded, gifted, tipped, sold and all else that can be done with tokens.
As far as we know this is first instance of word-NFTs, as NFTs so far have included pictures, animated pictures or short videos.
