Why we decided to fork SOCKS

Announcing Unisocks Classic — the REAL Unisocks

If we set the goal to create blockchain technologies that solve real-world problems, we should stand firmly in the real world. With one foot at the very least. Therefore, although we love the project, we’re challenging the redesign of Unisocks and announcing a fork in SOCKS because there are no emotions and no whims on the blockchain.

When Hayden Adams announced Unisocks at the Fluidity Summit on May 9th, he cited a number of ideas that are dear to the heart of any decentralization enthusiast. Notably, he talked about two key benefits of the Ethereum blockchain: immutability and trustless execution. At the end of his talk, Hayden announced Unisocks: limited-edition, dynamically priced socks with a unique design and distribution model. What could be cooler (or geekier) than blockchain-themed socks, right?

The socks are represented on the Ethereum blockchain by redeemable ERC20 tokens (SOCKS). Only 500 SOCKS tokens will ever exist, and their price grows dynamically depending on the ebbs and flows of the liquidity pool. Each SOCKS token sold increases the price of the next, but holders of SOCKS can sell their tokens back into the pool for others to buy. No physical socks have yet been distributed to the general public (at least to our knowledge), though a testnet appears to be live. An effervescent secondary market for SOCKS tokens has quickly emerged within the crypto community. Speaking for ourselves, we’re very proud holders of SOCKS tokens and love watching the dynamic pricing. The experiment is meant to be just that — an experiment, yet it is supposed to illustrate a pretty concrete use case. In his announcement, Hayden illustrated that this model could be applied to other physical limited-edition goods.

Then on July 2nd 2019, at 15:57 GMT, the design of Unisocks (the actual socks, not the SOCKS token) changed. This change was concealed from the community and happened without a formal announcement, but it is recorded in the project’s GitHub.