Token Economy

The term “smart contract” itself is a bit unfortunate, since smart contracts are neither particularly smart nor do they reflect legal contracts: (i) A smart contract can only be as smart as the people coding it, taking into account all available information at the time of coding; (ii) While smart contracts might have the potential to enforce legal ... See more

Selected Web3-based identity solutions are: “Ageify,” “Civic,” “Edge,” “Hu-manity.co,” “Jolocom,” “Keyp,” “Madana,” “Metadium,” “NewBanking Identity,”“ObjectTech,” “THEKEY,” “Trusti,” “PeerMountain,” “REMME,” “Riddle & Code,” “Spherity,” “uPort,”“UniquID,” “ValidatedID,” and “WoTT.”

However, the original Bitcoin white paper did not account for this form of collaboration amongst miners. The economic assumptions build on “simple game theory,” not “collaborative game theory.” As a result, the Bitcoin network has become a much more centralized system than originally intended. Some people therefore argue that the reality of Bitcoin... See more

Web2 platforms have introduced many beneficial services and created considerable social and economic value over the years. However, wealth was mostly accumulated by the companies offering the services, and less by the general public contributing content and value to those services. Instead of decentralizing the world, Web2 platforms contributed to ... See more

One of the most pressing applied research questions when developing complementary technologies for the Web3 is the question of how to reward network participants with a token, so that the network stays attack resistant. Examples thereof would be incentive mechanisms for decentralized file storage solutions, decentralized computation, data analysis,... See more

Therefore, the term “wallet” is misleading. The word “keychain” would be more appropriate, as it acts as a secure key storage, and as a communication tool with the blockchain network.

The “digital footprint” of all users is often stored in plain text (not encrypted) on the servers of the companies and used for data mining that creates recommendation algorithms, advertising algorithms, and other forms of user profiling that generate more income for these Internet platforms.

The user-centric identity process requires three actors: (i) identity issuers, (ii) identity owners, and (iii) identity verifiers. If set up correctly, anyone in a blockchain network can verify whether a piece of data (credential) is valid and which institutions attested to the validity of the data without revealing the data itself.

The current Internet was built around connecting machines, not people. The Internet does not provide a native identity layer for people, institutions, or objects other than the operating nodes in a network of computers. Workaround solutions have been built on the application layer using internal databases (private infrastructure) to manage all the ... See more

The separation of the “identifier,” “authentication,” and “data” is crucial to a user-centric setup. It can be seen as a system of checks and balances in a data-driven economy that guarantees the level of autonomy and privacy over one’s digital footprint, and is very contrary to how the Internet is set up today. Using a public infrastructure such a... See more