About Open Collectors Network

It's the first platform for creating and trading non-fungible tokens.

Best way to explain how we understand this concept, and how it applies to our project, is by example. Imagine you printed 1000 flyers and are handing them out on the street. You don't care which flyer you hand out from the stack, because they are all identical: same size, same content, same purpose etc. This collection of flyers is said to be fungible and it's equivalent to current crypto currencies: if you send someone 1 coin, it doesn't matter which one from your wallet it is, any one coin will do.

But let's consider now, another collection: paintings by famous artists. Already, we can tell a difference: though all of them are paintings, if you wanted to buy one, you wouldn't just pick randomly. You like some more than others, some are more expensive and so on. They're nonfungible, as they are all one-of-a-kind and it does matter "which" one it is.

It is this particular type of token that our platform is built for, and we strongly believe the use cases for it are endless. For examples, please refer to the Use cases section.


Use cases

The possible uses cases for unique tokens is almost endless. We have several that are already implemented and more that we have thought about and working on. But more importantly, it's the ones we didn't think about that are most exciting: our platform is open to everyone and we expect innovative ideas to be implemented on top of our platform, especially since it abstracts away all blockchain related complexity. Just to give a few examples:

1. Public

Individuals or groups can tokenize something of value to them, for personal use

2. Gaming platform

The ability to buy digital assets with the intent to use them within a game or within the development of a game is possible through leveraging the ERC721 standard. This means the marketplace offers the tools for game developers to sell their creations or use those creations for further game development. 

Card games like Magic: The Gathering© or in-game collectibles like a Dragon Lore AWP skin in Counter-Strike© can be held on the public ledger, increasing accountability and transparency for company. It also adds easier & cheaper payment options for selling the items.

3. VR

VR is fast becoming a mainstream industry, and through our platform, it will be seamless to tokenize valuable virtual objects that can be traded between participants, while attaching value (currency) to them. Additionally, because our platform respects an open standard, it will be possible to make use of items between different VR technologies/implementations interchangeably.

4. Artists

Almost any kind of artistic content can be held on the public ledger, for tokenized copyright purposes, or simply to sell it. Small creations, like a brand name, or a logo can be directly held on-chain, whereas larger ones can be stored anywhere on the cloud, and only a hash of their value stored on the ledger. This brings the best of both worlds: cheap/fast storage and full accountability. It is entirely possible to hold large amounts of data using a decentralized storage platform, like Storj or Oyster Pearl, so that would be our first choice.

5. Business sector

Any freelancer or business can easily tokenize personalized products (cars, devices or hand-crafted items).

6. Auction houses

Maintaining their inventory on the public ledger to increase trust among its client base. When an item is sold, after the auction, the unique token associated with it can be transferred to the buyer’s wallet

7. Discounts

Partnerships with companies which can tokenize their products. Let's take for example a user which lives and breathes Apple products. He will create/buy different Apple unique tokens, at which point he, or even we, can approach the company and obtain discounts for him as a
reward.

8. Embedded

Features like 'Facebook like button' that can be easily put up in place using only a script tag on your website.

9. User Identity

Our platform aims to collaborate with a KYC solution, where after a user has his identity verified, a unique token for him is created on the blockchain. After than, when the user needs to verify his identity with another web site, he can use Metamask to sign transaction verifying he is the owner of the token with all his information and the web site can double-check using our API.  Open Collectors Network ICO.

The same can apply for the more ordinary use case of logging into a website and it would work in just the same way as logging in with Facebook or Google, except it would be decentralized and you would own your credentials, not some 3rd party company

10. Programming

One of the most basic and common patterns in coding in general is using a collection of objects with different attributes. Standard ones include array, list, dictionary, hashmap and there are many open source libraries which provide specialized collections (think C++ Boost, .Net C5 etc). Our platform will provide such an open-source library with collections that store objects on the public ledger, bringing with it all the benefits of decentralization to nonblockchain devs. All you would need is an Ethereum wallet and to sign transactions using your private key, which would not leave your code.

Features

Everyone can own, create, customize, interact with and trade individual tokens, on an open market, based on existing standard specifications.

Technical Info

The platform is being built around Ethereum Smart Contracts, written in Solidity, which are used for managing ownership and transferals, in a secure and robust way. These are coupled with a clean front-end, based on AngularJS, for users to have an
overview of their assets and initiate operations.

The backend is useful for new token creation, as it will be responsible for advanced uniqueness rule enforcing, statistics and monitoring. It is based on open-source .Net Core and hosted in the cloud for maximum availability. It will come with a free public API, for more advanced users of the exchange. All interactions with the blockchain from the front-end must be as easy and intuitive as possible, using the most up-to-date mechanism, which, at the time of this writing, is the Metamask web wallet. We are planning integration with MyEtherWallet for the future.
As a desired consequence, the exchange does not store private keys of its users, putting them in total control of their assets. In addition, there is no need for account management on the client side (no signup/login), as all operations are made through the 3rd party open-source wallet, ensuring privacy and security. The platform aims to conform to GDPR standards, so we will no be storing any personally identifiable information, unless requested by law, and then only with the user’s consent.

ERC721 Standard

This is a relatively new and powerful standard created for the Ethereum ecosystem. Whereas up until now, almost all newly created tokens were fungible, meaning they are all equal, so any 5 tokens were just as good as any other 5 tokens, the need for unique, non-fungible tokens has recently arisen. These are items that must not be lumped together, but each item must be considered on its own for the purposes of atomic tracking, ownership and transferal. The ERC721 standard was created for exactly this purpose: ownership and transferal of individual tokens from one contract or address to another. This means that each token can be identified uniquely throughout the Ethereum ecosystem by the pair: (contract address, token id).

Open Collectors Network Roadmap

 
  • October 2017

  • Inception
    - ERC721 standard analysis
    - Collectible token mechanics & use cases analysis
    - Marketing strategy draft
    - Smart contracts draft
  • December 2017

  • ERC721 standard implementation; ECTO token smart contracts; Trading smart contracts ( demo )
  • January 2018

  • Team expansion; Smart contracts integration; Metamask integration; White paper; Platform smart contracts deployed on Ropsten; Token sale mechanics finalized & contracts tested end-to-end
  • March 2018

  • Token sale contracts deployed on mainnet; Prototype design overhaul, enhancements
  • April

  • - Team expansion
    - Sprint planning
  • April-May 2018

  • Team expansion; Sprint planning
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