COVID19 and the Accelerating Change of Digital Economy
Building a Global network economy system
With the advent of the Internet, our economic system has continually expanded online and endlessly reorganized. This change, which has been going on for about 30 years, has already made enough rapid changes for most people around the world. And, the COVID19 crisis which worsened at the beginning of 2020 is playing a huge role in accelerating those very changes.
The normalization of the non-face-to-face interactions and the acceleration of the digital economy transition have been major changes over the past few months, most of which we could firsthand see and experience with the real economy. These changes are altering our society to a whole new look and seem to be irreversible on a certain level. Along with the world that has changed, the rules of the games throughout industries are also rapidly changing. Some industries quickly shattered amid this change, while others exploded. The labor structure reorganized and the direction of investment changed as well. Many are worried about the recession, and investors, who have no clear direction, ceased all progressive actions and are spectating from the sidelines.
Blockchain and the Global Network Economy
Year 2020 is a difficult time for most people, but it is also a good time to consider the nature of business. It could be considered ironic, but in the sense of crisis, we can feel our survival instincts grow stronger and think more clearly. With great changes in the global economy and drastic advancement of economic structure present, we must be able to quickly sense where we are headed and how the world will further change into; and, be able to lead the change with in-depth contemplation.
The concept of labor and asset is transforming quickly, and I think blockchain will act as an accelerator of these changes. We have already seen these changes happen during the current COVID19 outbreak. We experienced that many tasks could be promptly replaced with remote or online work, more efficiently and effectively than we expected. As the share of online in our lives continues to grow, the interest in data collection, accumulation, and utilization will increase evermore rapidly; also, the trend toward assetization of data will progress at a growing pace as well. Now, we need to invest much swiftly and boldly and lead the flow.
As I first planned and developed the TTC ecosystem, the ongoing question that I have in my mind is, “How can the mass create more meaningful and valuable data and get reasonably compensated for their contribution?” This question is continuing as a deeper contemplation on how we can integrate the value that comes from the acts of creating (labor) and acts of rewarding such actions (wage), the economic system, into a protocol.
In a network economy system, value is mostly created through the act of generating, accumulating, and processing data. The act of creating data on social networks is one such act of value creation. In this sense, the proposition of the Acorn Protocol, “Help create data on various platforms, and transparently provide evaluation and compensation for that data,” can be applied equally to extended concepts. Through this concept extension, we intend to expand and develop the Acorn Protocol beyond social networks to a protocol that can embrace all value-creating behaviors made online.
Redefining Acorn Protocol…and WorkBox
I believe that Acorn protocol has the potential to build a global network economy. We are building a network economy system that anyone can participate from anywhere in the world and can be transparently rewarded for their contributions. Anyone who has access to the Internet can be directly connected to the global economy and participate in its various economic activities. We make it easy for anyone to create valuable data that has an economic impact.
To realize this vision, we needed to redefine the concept of the Acorn Protocol. We are rebalancing our priorities by efficiently adjusting the opportunities we captured and the resources we have. Introducing WorkBox, a service we are vigorously focusing on and preparing in Q2 and Q3 of 2020.
We are preparing the official launch of WorBox, as elaborated, an online value creation platform. WorkBox is a service that anyone can create value through the Internet and receive real-time rewards as much as the value they created. The service will be in the form of a DAPP that is listed on and accessible through AcornBox (a mobile wallet available on Apple Appstore and Google Play). The first industry that can participate in the global network economy and benefit from WorkBox will have deep roots in supervised machine learning. In other words, the AI industry/machine learning field which are closely related to data labeling and data collection will have the most demand at the initial stage. Machine learning in the AI industry, which is definitely in the spotlight recently, requires continuous training through numerous data, i.e. supervised learning; and this process requires constant cycling through data collection and data labeling. However, even to this day, these tasks are still being completed through the manual labor of many people. We expect that WorkBox will be able to create an unprecedented highly efficient system by allowing the mass to easily participate in data labeling and data collection.
With WorkBox, based on the experience we have accumulated, 1) anyone can participate as much as they want, 2) we can guarantee the accuracy of the results through our consensus mechanism, 3) reward the work done transparently and equitably through smart contracts, and 4) reward contributors in real-time regardless of national borders and time zones.
We believe that by utilizing the strengths of micro-payments, instant payments, and smart contracts of the TTC Blockchain, we can effectively build an economic system with higher efficiency and drastically lower management costs. As a result of internal testing so far, it is expected that WorkBox can maintain the compensation level of the service providers (workers) while being able to deliver results at a 70% lower cost and 7 times faster than the current average market statistics. Client companies can get their desired results much faster at a lower price, and suppliers can easily “work,” any time anywhere while receiving more abundant rewards.
The industry that can benefit through WorkBox will initially be those in need of data labeling and data collection, the AI industry/machine learning. But, we will gradually expand the fields to various businesses that have the need for data to be verified online. We will continue to port larger industries to our platform and gradually grow the overall economy.
The Flywheel of Ecosystem Expansion
Our vision and mission will not end with simply connecting the mass service providers and demand companies. Our flywheel logic, which we introduced in the previous articles, “The Flywheel Effect: TTC & ACN” and “TTC + DeFi”, will continue to take effect and be further strengthened.
First of all, we expect that when the online value creation platform and the decentralized financial system are linked, we will be able to exert a stronger influence. Those who are rewarded through WorkBox can easily stake and receive interest through Tigris Protocol. In line with the launch of WorkBox, we will launch a stablecoin staking service so that workers can receive stable interest while preserving the value of their assets. Users in developing countries still have limited access to banks, so we expect the staking service can serve as a kind of bank. The stablecoin staking service will significantly lower the participation threshold for decentralized financial systems for people outside the existing blockchain industry. Of course, through this process, users’ assets will stay on the TTC network much longer.
The linkage between various services within the TTC network, especially the linkage/combination of each service with the decentralized financial platform, will become more frequent. To cope with this progress, 1) we are working on a merger on Tigris Protocol with the official launch of TDEX, a decentralized exchange. And at the same time, 2) the Instant Swap service will be launched for more natural linkage between various services. Instant Swap is expected to seamlessly supply liquidity between various products in the TTC ecosystem and satisfy the differing demands of both developers and users.
When the services that are being prepared are launched and connected, it becomes easier for the many users to create value on our network, earn money, save or invest. This will provide the foundation for even more DAPPs of all types and purposes to join the ecosystem and target growth. The flywheel of ecosystem expansion will still operate as it was fundamentally designed, and the influx of capital and employers will gradually become stronger.
WorkBox
The WorkBox service is currently being beta tested and is aiming for its official launch in August. The WorkBox taskforce is continuously surveying the demand for companies and services. Starting from May, we took over work from actual client companies and began testing the service. Through our own consensus mechanism and token economy, we will keep on improving the service efficiency at a rapid pace, continue to provide fast and cheaper services to more and more demanding companies, stably secure customers, and distribute larger quantities of work and rewards to more workers. To lower the entry barrier for both client companies and data workers, the Instant Swap is also currently being beta tested since early July
Finally
I hope that our platform can help anyone across borders and time zones collaborate together and create greater values. With Acorn Protocol, we hope that more people will have further opportunities and more companies will be able to improve or solve their in-hand problems more efficiently. Based on this synergistic relation, we will create an even larger ecosystem; companies from various countries and industries will participate as consumers, and suppliers from various countries will be able to create value. Wouldn’t it be great to look forward to the arrival of a new global network economic system that will be built upon such economic logic?
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