A white paper for the creation of Garrett Camp’s digital currency the “Eco” was released on March 1st, 2018. The paper outlines plans by Camp’s Eco Foundation to create a global digital currency. The Eco Foundation hopes the currency will become the most usable digital currency platform, rivaling Bitcoin, gold, and fiat currency for ease of use and security of your funds.

In an interview with Fortune, which received a draft of the Eco white paper, Camp described his alternative philosophical standpoint. He plans to work with universities, scientists and research institutes to develop the Eco, under the governance of the foundation, along with the same style developmental path as the internet.

His hope, he told Fortune, is to “resuscitate virtual currency’s original promise: an instant, affordable, and borderless means of payment for the masses.”

Transparency in ownership

Where digital currencies currently have anonymous miners, Eco’s blockchain will have “verified nodes” offering more reliability as a monetary ecosystem. The nodes will run in partnership with universities and research institutes, removing anonymity and potentially gaining safety and reliability. The verified nodes contribute to the Eco ethos of coordinated governance, but still offer more decentralization than current organizationally ran monetary institutions.

Eco will be mined differently, with the mining “reward” shared equally among users and nodes. With an equal distribution approach, miners – or token generators – running nodes are encouraged to do the bare minimum to confirm the next block. Using this method, everyone makes money while reducing power consumption of the network as miners are not incentivized to commit massive power usage to mining operations.

Camp hopes to have a test-net operating later in 2018 and will offer web and mobile apps to users to facilitate the transfer and use of “Eco” coins. The foundation hopes the currency’s simplicity will encourage a wider sign-up and user base than other digital currencies, which historically attract more technologically savvy users.

The Eco Foundation will not be controlled by any one individual, organization, or nation. In the white paper, the organization is described as a “non-profit organization creating an open-source, decentralized financial system.”

Over time, Eco will become more decentralized with governance processes embedded into its protocol. Weighted-reputation voting mechanisms will eventually result in full system self-governance. Initially, the Eco Foundation will rely on traditional governance, similar to large public organizations, and include a board of directors and committees of expert contributors.

Ensuring even coin ownership

The aim of Eco is to give greater financial control and independence to billions of people and part of the development of the Eco Protocol includes plans for progressive decentralization and “full system self-governance” within a few years.

Camp plans to give away tokens of “Eco” to the first 1 billion users, rather than launching an ICO, to ensure even distribution and prevent a group of speculators from hoarding tokens.

Out of 1 trillion tokens planned to be generated over several years, half the supply will go to the first billion users. A fifth of tokens will be set aside for “verified nodes”, which will be university partners and researchers, a tenth for the Eco Foundation to fund expenses and research, a tenth for advisors and active contributors, and a tenth for “strategic partners worldwide”.

Financing Eco

Funding for the Eco Foundation comes from a $10 million USD (Approximately $13 million CAD) investment by Camp and a handful of partners affiliated with his startup accelerator Expa. Advisors currently listed on the eco.com website include AngelList founder Naval Ravikant, and ex-COO of Twitter, Adam Bain.

Further Eco Foundation supporters named on the eco.com website include Expa, TPG, and Virgin. Virgin Founder Sir Richard Branson is already an investor in Expa, along with Google board member Ram Shriram, HP CEO Meg Whitman, and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg.

Forbes named Camp as the 3rd richest Canadian in 2015, with an estimated wealth of $5.3 billion USD. He also joined The Giving Pledge, an initiative led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates to commit to donating at least half of his wealth to charity.

Image credit: Eco cryptocurrency logo

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