Overview and Goals

With the past year having the Ubiq core team primarily focused on network infrastructure and user tools like wallets, we are now delegating more time and resources to decentralized applications to use these tools and infrastructure. With the basis for many current open source EVM protocols being token focused we are creating a single protocol token to create a harmonious system that will be claimable by active holders of the UBQ cryptocurrency.

The Escher token (ESCH ticker) will first serve to allow these active participants to vote in our governance system based off the District0x protocol. Escher will allow us to have a system in place which fuels and directs proposals, polls, goals and bounties to help direct the Network Development Fund.

Escher will bring in the next phase of Ubiq community initiatives; improvements to the network and additional token protocols. The underlying use case of the ESCH token is to provide the most utilitarian unit in the Ubiq blockchain ecosystem. Having a separate ESCH token based off of UBQ claims over a period of time allows us to gather a strong representation of the participants in the Ubiq community and allows UBQ to maintain its freely flowing currency and store of value properties.

Escher, like the artist and paintings, will be multi purpose and so it can form the basis of proposals and token protocol implementations. The goal is to have Escher extended to have additional utility in the form of protocol tokens. These protocol tokens will either be in the form of using ESCH itself or an airdrop of protocol tokens to ESCH holders or having ESCH redeemable for a protocol token via a smart contract.

Claiming and distribution

Recently our leadership made the decision to finalize the distribution schedule of the Escher token to give greater reward to earlier participation. This mimics the distribution curve of many cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. As we build use cases and more utility for the ESCH token, there is a greater incentive for participants to claim seeing the direct functions within the ecosystem.

There will only be 8 distributions of ESCH tokens over the next 2 years at quarterly intervals, with the first rewarding 12 ESCH to 1 UBQ in your claim address, reducing immediately to 6, 3, 2 and 1 ESCH for the last 4 claim periods.

The first claim period has already started and ends at Ubiq block 448,000, with token sending happening over the subsequent blocks to all registered address showing a balance at the end block. Please allow up to 800 blocks for your ESCH deposit to be credited while the period of high network usage is process by the miners. With each quarterly report we will publish stats on the previous distribution and release details on the next claim contract.

How to claim

On the Escher claim page you will find details on how to claim ESCH with the Fusion and Pyrus wallets, with the latter being the most intuitive and easy to use with the contract preloaded in the contracts tab. Once your address is claimed and registered with the contract, it will update automatically with any changes in balances. You will be credited ESCH based on your total balance at block 448,000.

Two videos have been posted on Youtube with instructions on making claims using both methods:

Pyrus: https://youtu.be/t5oNkEbXwzc

Fusion: https://youtu.be/V_vbwQ0OFGk

Token standard

The ERC20 token standard has become a major player in smart contract based tokens and has led to well tested standard function calls for services to utilize. There have been several improvements proposed in the ERC777 standard which includes the extra data attachment that we’d like to help standardize in the EVM ecosystem. The ERC777 token standard is still being finalized so we will issue ESCH as the current standard and if there are major changes, there will be a swap process if needed (See Swarm City as example of this).