Following extensive joint research, Boson Protocol, the project building a capture resistant dCommerce ecosystem using NFTs encoded with game theory, and European venture capital firm Outlier Ventures, have released a formative report outlining the framework for the establishment of a decentralised commercial ecosystem, also known as a dCommerce ecosystem.
The report, titled ‘The dCommerce Stack: Disrupting commerce with a web3 ecosystem‘ specifically outlines how the unbundling of eCommerce will be achieved, and how this new ecosystem, fuelled by NFTs, will facilitate entirely new kinds of commerce.
“When we founded Boson Protocol, I wanted to build a system that would take the services provided by eCommerce monoliths and break them down into basic elements, which would create an entirely new decentralized commerce network that is more equitable, less beholden to behemoths like Amazon, and more competitive for consumers. Building out a collectively maintained infrastructure made up of smaller, composable services for commerce, we are now ready to make this theory a reality.”
– Justin Banon, CEO and Co-Founder of Boson Protocol
With interest in NFTs growing rapidly in recent months, the report pays homage to the potential of NFTs to change the way we do business. Allowing for the creation of tokenised commitments from buyers to sellers, instead of goods themselves, NFTs facilitate atomicity in dCommerce. These commitments can be thought of as futures contracts for goods or services, programmed within commitment tokens.
This report concludes that NFTs can be used to escrow the buyer’s payment and two-sided deposits upon both parties’ commitment to transact, which ensures that any trade that occurs in a dCommerce ecosystem proceeds as intended due to the fact that both parties have something to lose.
Recognizing the importance of collaboration, the report also calls for the collective innovation of the below stakeholders to facilitate the creation of the building blocks of decentralized commerce:
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Research Groups – Boson Protocol will offer small bounties to those who break down dCommerce challenges into detailed research questions and proposed solutions
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Web2 Platform and eCommerce Experts – Experts in platform strategy, channels, logistics, operations, and more are called upon to help further define dCommerce challenges and suggest best practices
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dCommerce Projects – Boson Protocol will work with Outlier Ventures to create a dCommerce track within their Base Camp Accelerator program, which will focus on the creation of ecosystem projects
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Token Engineering Community – As the scarcity of token engineers is a bottleneck for web3, Boson Protocol will support the education of new talent via a new token engineering curriculum, which will help advance the design of future tools for web3 and dCommerce.
“Boson Protocol is the cornerstone of a dCommerce stack, in the same way stablecoins were to DeFi. Their novel exchange mechanism allows for the first time digital-to-physical exchange to be possible, at scale, and it is one of the reasons why we became their first investor back in 2019. Working to build a commerce bridge between the metaverse and the physical world, this paper is Boson’s vision for how we can collectively make dCommerce a reality and it is an invite to a universe of academics, innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors to mobilise and make this happen without the need for central coordination.”
– Jamie Burke, CEO of Outlier Ventures
Earlier this month, Boson Protocol successfully concluded its public sale, raising $25.8 million, making $36 million the total amount raised by the project — one of the largest raises of the year by a company operating in the NFT space. The company has also made partnerships with industry players such as Ledger, Ocean Protocol, Eidoo, Royale Finance, Gather Network, Bridge Mutual, and Orion Protocol.