Ahead of a major redesign revamp, open sourcing a lot of front end modules, and major update of the Everipedia dapp, I’ll be explaining how we think about the future utility of the IQ token. This post is a lead-up to a much longer, tokeneconomic piece about IQ to be shared later.

Currently, the IQ token works as stake/equity in the Everipedia network. To understand how I think about the IQ token within the network, imagine that the Everipedia dapp was a private corporation and that every single action (from edits, changes to the rules, and increasing token rewards/funding initiatives) was put to a shareholder vote. At first this might sound extremely inefficient and cumbersome since it would seem like nothing would get done if every little thing had to be put to a vote. But this only feels slow and problematic because we have our outdated notion that shareholders physically meet at a time and place and resolutions are lengthy legal processes. That’s not obviously the case when stock is digitized into a token on a blockchain and utility programmed into it. Then voting on each of these shareholder resolutions simply becomes as quick as voting on a reddit link. With this setup you can pretty much have a “shareholder vote” for pretty much any type of action inside the application and make it as easy/fun as reddit.

In fact, everyone in the space pretty much knows this setup is called a DAO (or DAC might be more appropriate). I like to think of Everipedia as the first knowledge base DAO. With that said though, I think there’s one more step that needs to be taken to truly make “shareholder voting” in these types of DAOs really reach their potential — delegated shareholder voting.

As of today, the Everipedia team is looking into building a delegated stake system at the token level for IQ. This means that IQ holders can delegate out their voting powers to another EOS account which can vote on their behalf and use their stake to edit articles. The EOS account then splits the rewards (and/or all of the penalties) for their work with the original IQ holder.

This has 2 very clear and immediate consequences:

IQ tokenholders now have the potential to earn passive income through delegating their stake to individuals who would like to work but have no tokens. The rewards from the work is then split between the delegate and the tokenholder. An ecosystem of “editor guilds” can form vying for stake similar to how block producers campaign for EOS votes. These guilds/groups would then propose how they would improve the Everipedia ecosystem should they get IQ delegated to their accounts. This makes the community much more active and lively. Everyone wins in this system (assuming tokenholders delegate to worthy guilds).

Both of these outcomes excite me, and I’m really looking forward to building out this delegation system into the IQ token. In the coming days, the Everipedia team will be laying out the groundwork for baking in this feature in the everipdiaiq and eparticlectr EOS contracts. This update will need a formal tokenholder referendum by the community for final implementation. Upwards and onwards!