Written by kingflurkel and Matthew Carano

The June 15, 2017 release of Boardwalk introduced the very first Swarm City hashtag, called #pioneer. A hashtag is several things. First of all, a hashtag is the context by which users are transacting. This example has been used many times, but #needaride could be a ridesharing context, and riders and drivers would find each other there to communicate and transact. On a deeper level though, hashtags are smart contracts. When paired with a blockchain, smart contracts allow for completely decentralized commerce.

Hashtags are smart contracts

Each hashtag automatically performs commerce functions under certain conditions; for example holding funds, paying out funds, and creating reputation tokens. So when a user posts a request, the hashtag automatically pulls the payout amount selected from the requester’s wallet, and puts it into the smart contract. And when the requester acknowledges in the app that the deal was completed as expected, the hashtag automatically sends those same funds to the service provider and mints reputation tokens for each party.

These automatic functions take the place of escrow agents and payment processors, and make transacting in Swarm City trustless and decentralized. The reason why it’s trustless is because in Swarm City, each party can verify that the technology will not permit fraudulent behavior, so they don’t have to trust each other. This allows people who don’t know each other to feel secure transacting together without a middle party participating.

So far only #pioneer is available for commerce, and users have been transacting solely on it. The reason why the first Swarm City transactions are limited to one hashtag is to get everyone used to navigating the interface. It also gives the Dev Team the opportunity to gather user feedback, and apply it to improve user experience. Early adopters will forever hold reputation in #pioneer, proving they were participating in the ecosystem from the very start.

Creating and maintaining hashtags

The next phase in the Boardwalk release is opening up the ability for every user to create and maintain hashtags. Before discussing how this works, let’s review commerce in Swarm City from a conceptual level.

Commerce begins with the individual. An individual user creates their identity in Terminal. In Swarm City, a user’s identity is their wallet. A user’s wallet holds not only the amount of currency they have (the Swarm City Token — SWT), but their reputation as well. As the user successfully transacts on a hashtag, they are minted reputation tokens for that hashtag. Reputation (SWR) is stored in their Swarm City wallet (and thus on the blockchain) and forever indisputable. Next, in order to participate in commerce a user must enter Boardwalk. Boardwalk is the Swarm City marketplace; akin to a virtual mall or a bazaar that has many individual markets. It’s an open, public place where users can witness transactions and determine for themselves which markets are safe and preferable to do business in. A hashtag is an individual market within the Boardwalk marketplace. It gives context to each transaction. Just like in a real world marketplace you might go to the taxi stand to hail a ride home, in Swarm City you might choose its virtual counterpart; #needaride. A user would choose to create and maintain a hashtag if they are interested in operating a market where goods or services are provided.

Once activated, creating a new hashtag in Swarm City will be very easy to do. First, in Swarm City App, click the plus button on the hashtag list screen.

Since a hashtag is an Ethereum smart contract, it takes processing power to create. That processing power will be paid for in SWT (the cost is the gas cost in Ether, expressed in SWT). On this screen the creator is informed of the payment amount.

The hashtag creator then enters a hashtag description to inform users what type of commerce is appropriate for this hashtag.

Next, the hashtag creator will enter their contact information so that users who need support can reach them.

Then the hashtag needs a name. Enter it here.

On this screen a hashtag fee can be set. The hashtag fee will always be a fixed amount and has a minimum, and will be automatically paid to the hashtag creator each time a transaction occurs over their hashtag.

The hashtag is being created step by step.

Once the processing is complete, the hashtag creator will be able to share their hashtag short URL, and any user can transact on it.

The new hashtag #devops has been added to Boardwalk. It will only be visible in a user’s list if there is activity on it, in their geolocation. Users can also see offers by directly going to the hashtag’s URL.

By selecting #devops, a user can see all the deals created, or create their own.

That’s it! A new hashtag has been added to Boardwalk, and is ready to be used. Hashtag smart contracts give users the ability to communicate and transact in a trustless, decentralized way. Remember, #devops is an individual market located in the marketplace known as Boardwalk. Each hashtag is a context by which users are participating in commerce. When they transact over #devops, they are building reputation in that context. Users signal which reputation is important to them by the hashtags they transact over.

Add a team

The hashtag creator’s responsibility is to make sure their hashtag is an excellent place to participate in commerce. Otherwise users will transact elsewhere. In the non-virtual world, if a market owner fails to provide value, perhaps by charging too much or offering a poor selection, they will lose entrepreneurs and customers to a competing market. The same thing will occur in Swarm City. The hashtag creator receives compensation in the form of their hashtag fee. They must earn this fee by pleasing their users.

With that in mind, a user might have certain expectations for transacting over a hashtag. For instance, they might feel more secure if there were an arbitration system in place in case they have a problem with a deal. A hashtag creator may not have the skill set to provide arbitration, so in order to please users they could choose to partner with people who do have that skill set.

In this way hashtag creators may share the responsibility of maintaining their hashtag with other users (and later groups of people known as Hives). The creator would allocate a portion of the hashtag fee to compensate them for their efforts. Here are the steps for adding users to the hashtag maintenance team.

On the hashtag maintainer screen, choose the “plus” symbol to add a new team member.

Set the percentage of the hashtag fee the new member will receive for each transaction.

Invite the new team member by filling in their short code.

Confirm the new team member.

The new team member has been added. This screen shows a breakdown of the hashtag fee split. Since the hashtag is a smart contract, it will automatically split the hashtag fee according to this graph, sending the correct payment to each public key.

Conclusion

Once users can create their own hashtags, context specific markets will begin to emerge in the Swarm City ecosystem.

If you’d like to experience this user flow as a clickthrough model, please go here: https://invis.io/R9CLHZZUY

If you’d like to know more, please come say hello in Slack. You may also follow the development process on Github.