My fellow retards,
For the purpose of this work, NFTs are Non Fungible Tokens. They are supposed to be uniqueâthat is their main selling point. You can own something that is provably rare that exists in a digital context. Thatâs neat. Bitcoin UTXOs are technically NFTs, but nobody views them that way. A 50 BTC coinbase transaction UTXO from mining a block in 2010 is worth a tremendous amount more than a 50 BTC UTXO that has a history of being passed through mixers and darknet market sites. Bitcoin is not technically fungible, but for the most part people donât care.
Will natively mined phonons be fungible, or quasi-fungible like bitcoin?
Imagine you mine two distinct 8 bit native phonons. You canât really tell them apart other than the random string of hexadecimal characters that distinguishes them. Those arenât human readable, or rather, they convey no information to the reader. They are just bits of data. Phon/ongod proposes to change that.
In 2016, Zcash was preparing to launch. It is essentially a bitcoin like system but has as an option a type of shielded transaction that uses zero knowledge proofs in order to ensure that nobody knows the sender, the receiver, or the amount sent. Zero knowledge proofs can be quite incredible for the crypto space, but their intracies exceed current elvish capabilities.
In order to launch Zcash, the team needed to do what is called a âtrusted setupâ which was a pre-requisite to utilize a zero-knowledge proof called a SNARK (succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge). The SNARK acts as an engine to quickly verify a transactionsâ legitimacy without leaking any data. The trusted setup means that a group of individuals participate in a ceremony where they create keys that can be used to create proofs for private transactions. A hidden parameter links the keys. The users in the trusted setup need to destroy the linking of keys, else they could forge transactions. As long as one individual is honest, the system is safe.
This is a bit more advanced than what you need, but it is interesting. Phon/ongod proposes that the Phonon community do something similar to give greater value to native phonons. No, this is not to suggest the protocol adds zero knowledge capabilityâthat would be redundant since all phonon transfers occur in an encrypted tunnel between two parties and are inherently private.
Instead, the community can create a trusted setup. Any willing community member can take part and help create a data structure through a setup ceremony. All native phonons are fed through this data structure to emit a visualized NFT. Think back to the early days of Ethereum when everyone used the MIST wallet, and all keypairs had a little pixelated bugger as its representation. Natively mined phonons could have far more value if they were visualized. Humans love novelty, and can be influenced to value on the ones they find particularly appealing.
You could think of this as cryptokitties-esque. All native phonons get fed through this agreed upon data structure, which creates an NFT artwork with unique characteristics and greater potential value. Simple, straightforward, and a lot more fun than just staring at a string of hexadecimal characters on your screen.
Phon/ongodâs elves beat the drum of community. If the humans who comprise the Phonon community can be uniquely inspired by the added utility of an embedded collectible novelty artwork for native phonons, phon/ongod will see it built.
Ideas like this will be iterated and executed by Phonon DAO.
Tips to phonongod.eth will be invested in bounties that advance the Phonon project.
Hatemail to phonongod@protonmail.com will be scathingly considered.
Targets for the marketcap of PHONON DAO remain:
$1b by Q2 2022, $12b by EOY.
On the high end, $300b marketcap in 3 years.