Etherparty is a blockchain technology company that develops smart contract applications powered by the FUEL token. We are currently developing a platform that allows users to create smart contracts on any compatible blockchain without having any programming knowledge. The Etherparty beta is currently live. If you would like to participate, please visit our website to sign up. This post is part of our ongoing developer update series.

As a pioneer in the sector, we understand the tremendous potential of smart contracts. We also feel the responsibility to deliver an ethical product that has been tested and can be trusted by the community. On a security level, our templates will be repeatedly utilized by the public so we thoroughly audit them both internally and externally.

In the effort of sharing what we learn with the community, this weekend we successfully launched our defensive programming smart contract bootcamp. The workshop received a great response and was the first of a series that Vanbex Academy will be offering.

Drew Ogryzek, host of the Vancouver Tech Podcast, stated “[Instructors] Matt Lockyer and [Patrick Guay] did a very much above average job, and I super appreciated that testing was treated as a first-class citizen”.

Vanbex Academy is an initiative started by the Etherparty team to build interest and understanding of Solidity development in Vancouver. At our first community workshop, we invited Steve Parr, a local Vancouver lawyer and in-house counsel for the Quantstamp project, to discuss token sales and regulation. Our goals are to teach Solidity best practices, while providing a holistic view into the Ethereum ecosystem.

On a deeper level, we’ve also been looking forward to the future of contracts and how our influence can play a role in the stabilization of an increasingly chaotic scene — the initial coin offering.

State of the Token

A core use case for the Ethereum blockchain right now is to create a decentralized token. The token is often distributed in various stages, and then intended to be used solely on a company’s platform for the purposes of obtaining a service.

Meantime, the burgeoning industry has seen insufficient security protections on smart contracts, as well as a rush to take advantage of an emerging market, which has led to a “tulip mania” of sorts. Just about all of our readers are familiar with the recent rise in the price of bitcoin (BTC).

Vitalik Buterin at the ETH Hackathon at Waterloo was referring to the lack of quality and likelihood of failure for many of the current token projects when he commented that, “I expect that tokens 2.0 and the kinds of things that people will start building in 2018 and 2019 will generally be of substantially higher quality.” These sentiments were echoed on Bitnews Today among other publications on the industry.

Misuse of the blockchain is contributing to a lack of trust in the community, and the general sentiment that an initial coin offering should be guilty until proven innocent.

Etherparty would like to raise the bar with regards to ethics in the industry and are proposing a model that reflects a higher standard for token mechanics.

An Ethical Token Model

GOALS:

Any successful model will need to achieve all of these in order to be effective.

The full allocation of a token must be publicly disclosed and accounted for. The party of issuance cannot change allocations or terms after token deployment. The presale structure must be as transparent as the public sale structure. The sale environment must not be a zero-sum game where the pre-sale advantages result in losses for small investors who participate during the public sale. The blockchain should be the one source of truth for token contributions and allocations through all stages. The transparency of a contract should bolster confidence in participation in an equitable design, and conversely would discourage contributions in an unfair one. The purpose of a token should be expressed clearly, and this information should be immutably added to all contracts.

In addition to the industry standard token we offer in the beta, Etherparty is developing and testing further implementations that meet these goals. We’re excited to share our progress as we create a base, extensible ethical token contract to coincide with our mainnet application launch in Q1 2018.

If you have any questions or comments, we’d love to hear them. Send a message to support@etherparty.com. If you’re interested in the next Vanbex Academy sessions with the Etherparty developers, join our Meetup group at Blockchain Vancouver.

Disclaimer

No wording contained herein should be construed as solicitation for investment or financial advice in any regard. Etherparty has no control over secondary uses and therefore cannot accept any responsibility for FUEL tokens utilized for investment, speculative, or for secondary market purposes. Statements in this blog relating to the Company’s future plans and objectives are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions and are subject to all of the risks and uncertainties inherent in the Company’s business, including risks inherent in development.