XYO World AMA with Arie Trouw

Arie Trouw, CEO and CTO of XY — The Persistent Company, as well as co-founder of XYO, is answering your questions about our latest project to launch, XYO World! Arie conceived and personally built most of this software (which is why his Twitter feed is a great place to get updates), so he’s the ultimate authority on the subject of XYO World.

Let’s find out more.

Question — Russ from Facebook & @Merkillin on Twitter:

Russ: When will XYO World be on COIN?

Merkillin: I read about this upcoming feature. The COIN app will somehow be connected to the xyo world? Would you like to share any information about this?

Arie’s Answer: The first system that will make use of the XYO World Geotoken data set is the COIN app. We have created a road map for this integration that will continue as the number of XYO Tokens minted increases. I’m sure the real question is what will be the first feature integrated and how soon can we expect that? The first feature is the ability to show a message with a link to users of COIN at times when they are using COIN App in the area that is covered by the geotoken. The first iteration of this will be live in the next week or so.

The second integration point is that ability for XYO World Geotoken Holders to be involved in the mining economy of COIN. The details of how this will work are not ready to be shared yet, but should start shortly after the messaging system is live. Currently, we plan to make the visualization of this available on the XYO World site, rather than in the COIN app.

Question — Anthony from Telegram:

Does XY actually own the intellectual property of dividing the world into tiles and auctioning them? Or can other companies do the same if they chose to?

Arie’s Answer: XY owns the copyright to the source code of the minting and geotoken Solidity code that is used for this system along with the code for the XYO World website. The basis for the Geotoken Smart Contract is the publicly available code for the Erc721 spec. So the short answer is yes, other companies could build a system that works like this, but they are not currently able to use our source code to do that.

If there is a situation where it makes sense to share that code with a partner or the public, then they will also be able to stand up a similar system.

Question — From @GerassimovIlia on Twitter:

When will owners of geotiles be able to customize tiles? Is it up to the app creators, such as COIN utilization?

Arie’s Answer: The first phase feature of setting a message that will be displayed in the COIN app is also the most basic of customization of the geotokens. We plan to add many more customization options, such as colors and even virtual devices that exist in the geotoken. Some of these customizations will be stored in a centralized form, for practical purposes, but the system also allows these customizations to be stored on the blockchain as data and IPFS links.

However, in the case where the customization is on the blockchain, the XYO World Viewer that you are using will always be able to choose to not show certain fields if for some reason those fields are not appropriate.

Question — From @rafzalan on Twitter:

Current gas price makes the Ethereum platform unaffordable for dapps like COIN and XYO World (lots of small transactions), so what is your long/short term solution?

Arie’s Answer: There is no short term solution for the gas prices as far as purchasing the actual Erc721 Geotokens goes, but we will be using centralized solutions to store the customization of the geotokens and for processing the interactions between them initially. Our hope is that as time goes along and when solutions such as ETH 2.0 comes out, we will be able to migrate more of those features to the blockchain.

We are also looking at solutions for how to allow people to use some of the deep geotokens before they are mined by ‘renting’ them, to allow for the system to progress faster.

Question — From @HerkMan130 on Twitter:

For staking or any other Geotoken function, will geographic location provide any benefit? #middleoftheocean

Arie’s Answer: The geographic location of the owner of a geotoken does not matter other than if they are also using COIN, they will not be able to easily see their own customizations in real time. The area that the geotoken covers is very important, because the interactions with the system from those locations are what will be driving many of the features. This means that in most cases, higher population areas will have more activity.

Question — From XY PM Maryann:

The biggest question coming from the XYO community and support is, “What’s the value of a geotoken?” People want a better understanding of what geotoken ownership is likely to offer beyond minting deposits for child geotokens and rebates for being outbid.

Arie’s Answer: The primary benefits for the owners of the geotokens are the customizations that are afforded them. Initially, this just includes messaging and icons that are shown to COIN users, but the ability to affect the rules of COIN and interact with other COIN users as a ‘land owner’ will follow. The benefit of recouping your initial mining deposit is not intended to be the primary benefit, but rather a way to drive the pace of the auctions by allowing minters of the geotokens to reuse their XYO tokens to buy deeper geotokens. There will no doubt be some people who generate a profit during the minting of the tokens, but that is only a temporary side effect and the long term benefit is in ownership.

Question — From an Anonymous Twitter User:

Will there be a secondary market for geotokens?

Arie’s Answer: The nature of Erc721 Tokens (NFTs), is that they reside in your crypto wallet and are transferable. This means that a market can form around them. We will make a UI that exposes this functionality to allow transferring and we are considering whether or not to make a Smart Contract that would allow for people to “list” their tokens for auction or resale.

Want to find out even more and learn Arie’s thoughts on everything XYO World? Check out the video version of this AMA.