Lotos lets anyone erect a “digital temple” and grow its community for free

Lotos is building a complete Buddhist ecosystem on the Ethereum blockchain. Decentralized religion solves many issues and offers many efficiency gains.

For starters, here is a list of 14 problems and solutions gained from decentralization and digitization.

For everyone

1.) Religious persecution

Religious persecution is a recurrent theme in human history. The persecution of Buddhists is no different with many examples happening today.

The blockchain provides anonymity for all users and ensures certain records are never destroyed.

For students

2.) Accessible

Physical temples can be hard to find and hard to travel to. Digital temples on Lotos are easy to find and easy to join, from anywhere in the world.

With digital classes, you can bring teachers from the other side of the world inside your house without needing to travel anywhere.

3.) Comparable

Today, it is nearly impossible to compare temples meaningfully. You can get recommendations from friends, or read reviews (when they exist) online.

Lotos creates a public universal reputation system. Not only that, on Lotos all aspects of a temple (for example how authoritarian vs. egalitarian they are, how much teachers are paid, etc.) are transparent and easily comparable.

4.) Movement between temples

What if you join a temple, but find out that it is not quite the right fit? On Lotos you can quickly move between temples, and preview classes until you find a style of practice or teacher that works for you.

5.) Trust

Corruption in temples is very common. There are stories of monks and abbots being arrested and entire temples only existing to accumulate illicit funds.

Take the infamous “Tiger Temple”, which operated for years guised as a Buddhist temple and accumulated millions of dollars by trading illegal wildlife.

Rather than ignore this issue, Lotos approaches it head on. We make all economic records transparent and recorded forever on the blockchain. Not only that, but member positions, and even important communication can be preserved and made transparent for anyone to see.

Trust in organizations and teachers is critical for student progress. After all, doubt in teachers (vicikicchā) is one of the five hindrances in Buddhism. The blockchain is the ideal way to eliminate corruption and renew trust.

6.) Cheaper

Payments in Lotos are direct — the blockchain eliminates middlemen for true borderless payments and extremely cheap transactions.

A group of monks at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

7.) Interactive

While there are some good services for guided meditations (podcasts), there are none that focus on live community interactions.

When you join Lotos, you are joining a community of real people just like you. The social benefits of joining a Sangha were stated by Buddha many times. Here is one example:

“At any time when a disciple of the noble ones is recollecting the Sangha, his mind is not overcome with passion, not overcome with aversion, not overcome with delusion. His mind heads straight, based on the Sangha. And when the mind is headed straight, the disciple of the noble ones gains a sense of the goal, gains a sense of the Dhamma, gains joy connected with the Dhamma. In one who is joyful, rapture arises. In one who is rapturous, the body grows calm. One whose body is calmed experiences ease. In one at ease, the mind becomes concentrated.”

For teachers

Lotos automates processes like broadcasting classes, scheduling, accepting payment and so forth so teachers can maximize their time on student interaction.

8.) Hosting and scheduling

Hosting live classes, finding the right platform, coordinating times etc. with students across different timezones is a hassle. Lotos makes these processes as easy as possible for teachers.

9.) Earning a living

Teachers are paid instantly, without middlemen, anywhere in the world. Accepting payment for both on-demand content and live classes takes no extra effort. This makes is delightfully easy for teachers to earn a living without needing their own infrastructure.

10.) Monitor student progress

Keeping track of students is difficult, especially as their numbers grow. Lotos systematizes this process. Teachers can look at a student’s profile and quickly ascertain their progress through account activity and reports.

For organizations

Start a new temple or broadcast classes existing classes for free.

11.) It’s free

Don’t pay expensive bills for a physical location or your own digital infrastructure. Do everything you would normally do with a physical temple, but online for free.

12.) Recruit students

Traditionally temples have erected golden Buddha statues and done other expensive things to recruit students. On Lotos you only need a good reputation score, and students will automatically find and join you. Focus on student progress rather than marketing.

13.) Anticorruption

Easily track all funds going in and out of the temple. Ensure your members are not corrupt with teacher reputation scores and transaction history. All records are transparent and immutable.

For scientists

14.) Data collection

Having all student-teacher interactions and meditation on a single platform means large amounts of data can be collected. We will open-source all of this data to benefit the scientific understanding of meditation.

In conclusion

This is a list of some of the advantages a decentralized, digitized Buddhist ecosystem has. Other blockchain advantages like network-level awareness and Buddhist economics are described in more detail in our whitepaper:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1srn1n2cC9t8ualpKjC-a0ptkbhga7oxqqknr1LpKRQ8/edit?usp=sharing