Zap’s Decentralized Platform

Zap has just launched a completely decentralized tokenized bonding curve curation market, comprised entirely of smart contracts live on mainnet!

Use the platform now at admin.zap.org (use metamask).

As we continue to develop the platform, we saw the tokenized bonding curve curation market potential goes far beyond what we explained in our 2017 whitepaper. For this reason, we think it is important to offer a refresher or “re-introduction” to our platform and all it can provide.

Start with a bonding curve. This is a smart contract that can issue tokens as one stakes value, or “bonds” tokens, based on a floating price point signifying the intersection on a graph between the point on the x-axis (horizontal graph line) showing many tokens have been generated, and the y-axis (vertical graph line) showing how expensive they become. The value bonded stays in the contract ready to be redeemed for the secondary token at the price point currently reflected on the graph. This has the effect of allowing for trading to occur without needing market makers or liquidity. This creates an incentive to drive best practices among competing oracles. This also forms a speculative market where bonding early (when the quantity and price may both be lower, so the price point may be in the lower left corner on the graph) to high quality oracles yields a greater reward for those who would want to unbond or query this oracle later when the bonding ratio is at a substantially greater position than it was during its Initial Oracle Offering (IOO).

A few of the most exciting use cases currently being explored using our platform are:

Curating Oracles for Trusted Data Feeds — The staked value creates an incentive for the provider to remain honest while giving an indicator to the developers as to which feed the community has decided is most valuable. This also allows the provider to have a fluctuating price point and make more money based on a higher demand. The secondary token in this case would be, by design, a Dot, which is good for one (1) query of the oracle from a smart contract.

Ico Launch Platform — Generating a curve that issues erc20 secondary tokens eliminates the need for liquidity, exchange listings, or market makers as participants can enter and exit positions and have an increase or decrease in value by interacting directly with the contracts.

Tradable Futures Markets — In its simplest form, two bonding curves are created for generating long and short tokens on an asset, and at the end of a pre-set period, the losing curve pays out the staked value as a dividend to the holders of the winning curve token.

Fundraising or Bounty Development Competitions — Generate one master curve with a problem to be solved, and individuals stake value to this curve. Participants who want to enter the competition would each have their own curve. The community would then speculate on who they believe to be the winner by staking to one of the competitors curve. If the bounty is satisfied the winner would receive the original master value with the speculators on that winner receiving the value staked by the losing curves.

For any of these use cases, anyone in the world can run a server, host an oracle, and list it on our platform. In order to fuel the adoption of this technology, we will continue to focus heavily on developing templates in order to make our platform as developer friendly as possible.