Keywords as Tokenized Assets on the Ethereum Blockchain

Is there more to the crypto-collectible standard, ERC721, than games like CryptoKitties, CryptoCountries, or ETH.Town? CryptoKeywords aims to provide a proof-of-concept real-world use case for crypto-collectibles: keyword listings.

Introducing CryptoKeywords

At the heart of every search engine is an index of keywords and links. CryptoKeywords is the pioneering service that is building this index all on the blockchain. It aims to build this index independent of any off-chain technologies, such as search engine spiders or algorithmic ranking. Instead, CryptoKeywords will leverage the blockchain on what it does best: transactions.

(Currently, there are a number of projects aiming to build search engine capability on the blockchain, such as PreSearch and BitClave, each tackling various aspects of the search engine puzzle. CryptoKeywords differentiates itself by building this on the Ethereum blockchain, without issuing its own ICO tokens, and by starting with the search index. We recognize that the Ethereum blockchain is, at the moment, facing scalability issues. As such, CryptoKeywords, at this stage, is built to be more analogous to the prototype of Yahoo!, Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web, rather than Google.)

The CryptoKeywords index will be populated and grown through exclusive ownership of its entries. Currently, the creation of new entries is controlled by CryptoKeywords, but with increased adoption, we will open it up to allow for long-tail growth. In its pilot version, entries will all be about cryptocurrencies.

The mechanism of owning keywords is gamified, and borrows the same mechanics as collectible trading games on Ethereum. Just like these collectible token games, every asset in CryptoKeywords is an ERC721 token. Ownership of a token allows the user to exclusively associate content, such as a website or a YouTube video, with that keyword.

Similar pricing mechanics have been put in place to make collecting these keyword tokens engaging and fun. Soon, these keyword tokens can be traded on exchanges that support this standard.

The vision is to establish a thriving ecosystem of keyword ownership, trading, and usage.

Project History

When the crypto-collectible craze hit the scene with CryptoKitties at the fourth quarter of 2017, and, at the start of 2018, with the rise and fall of hot potato games like CryptoCelebrities and CryptoAllStars, we were figuring out the business model for our then unnamed decentralized keywords registry.

We had a prototype of an idea, 1 Word, 1 Site!, which was a registry for brand-to-word associations. It’s a variant of a paid-listing search engine, where the entries are all single keywords, and only one site can be associated with that keyword. After a few private presentations, we realized that this idea was better suited to live on the blockchain, and so we pivoted, and chose Ethereum as our platform.

One of the first things we decided was that we had to change the business model. 1 Word, 1 Site! was based on subscription, where the users pay annually to keep their entries active. There had to be a central administration to manage this subscription. For the blockchain, we were drawn by the idea of tokenized asset ownership. In particular, we were interested in ERC721, the non-fungible token standard, which allows for the ownership and trading of unique assets on the Ethereum blockchain, all managed without intermediaries through a smart contract.

A team member was quick to point out, though, that ownership comes with its own challenges, like cybersquatting. This was a problem with domain names, where opportunistic individuals could snap up names that belonged to well known brands for cheap, and sell them for exhorbitant prices. We needed a way to prevent early adopters from doing the same.

The answer came with the flipping model that was introduced by CryptoCelebrities. With their model, the buyer of an asset can’t hold it if someone else is willing to pay at a higher price. The original owner loses ownership of the asset, but gets compensated by being paid with its original purchase price, plus a profit. We thought this was a fair trade-off, and it was a way for the market to price assets based on desirability, instead of being dictated by any single user.

And so, the plan of CryptoKeywords was born.

(We’d like to note that the primary difference between CryptoKeywords and these “hot potato” games is the envisioned intent of our users. For the likes of CryptoCelebrities, users bought the cards intending to make a quick buck with its purchase by another, and the last user left holding the maximally priced “asset”, which is nothing more than an image of their celebrity, loses. In our case, our target users are those who find value in the asset and would like to hold it, as it is to associate the keyword to their brand.)

The team then got up to speed with developing on Solidity, the development platform of Ethereum. We started with the contracts of CryptoKitties, the top ERC721 DAPP at the time, and modified them to suit our requirements. (The code, containing the back-end Solidity contracts and front-end single page Angular app, is now released in GitHub in our own repository.)

Another decision we had to make was whether to launch the service with open registration of keywords. We decided that its best to present this proof-of-concept with a selective set of keywords for this initial stage. And so, we launched the website, CryptoKeywords.com, under-the-radar, with its current set of keywords, all related to cryptocurrencies.

Stay Tuned!

In our succeeding posts, we will share the features of the contracts of the CryptoKeywords DApp (Decentralized Application), and how you can operate your own CryptoKeywords registry.

Thank you for reading! Please let us know what you think!

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