FYI : Translate from japan.cnet.com by Google
On September 27, LINE held a press briefing on the Token Economy concept “ LINE Token Economy “ and gave details on the token economy and DApps (Distributed application: denoted as dApp in LINE) service, “wizball” of Q & A service , Future Forecast “4 CAST”, Product Review “Pasha”, Gourmet Review “tapas”, SNS specialized in spots such as sightseeing spot “STEP”.
Mr. Takeshi Izawa, CEO of LINE CEO who stood at a press conference, said, “By fusing CGM services that have long worked on (such as LINE blogging) and block chains, we will create new value,” the content consumer He says he has conceived LINE Token Economy in order to build a mechanism that can appropriately return to users in the modern Internet where contents producers are increasing, such as reviews, blogs, and SNS.
Even though other web services and others had a mechanism of return, they pointed out that it was a small amount and the mechanism of the reduction was not fair. Also, in services where a huge number of users participate, there are many problems, such as reducing the system to be complicated and enormous. Using block chains, we can solve the mechanism of transparency and incentive, maintaining user’s motivation, permanent development of service becomes possible, we can make big paradigm.
“LINK Ecosystem” which has a big meaning to overseas deployment of LINE
LINE Token Economy established the “LINK Ecosystem” using the block chain consortium of Korea “ ICON “ and the block chain network “LINK Chain” originally developed by LINE as the main net. LINK Chain is a private type consortium chain, which is different from public chains such as bit coins and ether symbols. It improves scalability and transaction speed by building its own node, it can handle 1000 transactions per second per node.
There are two types of coins to be issued independently, LINK for overseas and LINK Point for domestic. Although LINK for overseas can be traded like other virtual currencies, since LINK Point conforms to domestic law, it is possible to exchange into LINE points without cashing and therefore the nature of the real company point Have. The total issue volume of LINK for overseas is 1 billion LINK, 80% of which is distributed to each dApp. It is said that LINE holds 20% as a reserve. LINK does not distribute it at a stretch, but plans to distribute it according to the business progress. It also provides “LINK Scan” to visualize LINK transactions.
LINK will be able to trade with other currencies such as bit coins from October 16th through the virtual currency exchange “BITBOX” (not accessible from Japan and the US) deployed overseas by LINE. BITBOX started service in July 2018, and the total trading volume so far exceeded 10 billions of dollars (about 1 trillion yen). Even in the rankings of world exchanges, it has grown to 2nd place by daily so far and has grown steadily. Regarding LINK, the company says it will not implement ICO.
The LINK allocated to each dApp is granted according to the user’s activity, and LINK can be used by other dApp, and in the future it is possible to use other electronic currency or other currencies It can be exchanged for cash. The LINK Point can also be exchanged for the LINE point and it can be exchanged to 500 LINE points per 1 LINK Point. With this, it is available for settlement in LINE Pay and LINE services.
The LINK ecosystem is not closed only to the dApp service. In addition to planning cooperation with the company’s CGM service such as “LINE LIVE”, “LINE Creators Market”, and “LINE Manga” indies division, as a third phase, so that external developers can participate in LINE Token Economy, We are also considering opening to third party patties both in Japan and overseas. Even companies that are stepping up to introduce token economy for reasons such as investment amount and human resources side can enjoy the effect of token economy and that the value of LINE Token Economy itself will further increase by expanding network with the outside.
LINK also has an important meaning in overseas deployment of LINE. Services on LINE generally expand business in countries where LINE is popular, but since LINK is separated from LINE, it can also be distributed in countries where LINE is not developed. As a result, overseas user-participatory services and incentive services, which are trying to introduce token economy, introduce LINK, which holds the potential for LINE Token Economy to spread all over the world.
Also, consider security. Block chains are composed of digital signatures and encryption algorithms, which are originally highly secure, but in addition to this, they are deployed in private block chains to achieve both high speed and security. Furthermore, in the smart contract part for building the ecosystem, we introduced a whitelist and verification function to prevent the implementation of wrong smart contracts. We will introduce LINE’s expertise cultivated through service management of 200 million monthly active users.
What are the five services LINE develops?
LINE Director CSMO Mr. Atsushi Masuda explained that as the reason for choosing the area of dApp service to be offered this time, “User needs are high even in the Internet and mobile age, and it is growing as user participation”. It seems that they have chosen five areas that are easy to make use of the knowledge that has been handling CGM services for many years and that are compatible with the token economy.
First, wizball puts a value as a knowledge sharing platform in doubt and knowledge, and gives LINK Point to all actions such as questioners and respondents. By turning on a mechanism to properly evaluate the value properly, it secures the quality and expertise of the answer, which tends to be a problem of Q & A service, and maintains the motivation for users to continue to participate. Also, wizball can receive professional and accurate answers by placing authorized experts in fields other than users, such as IT, medical care, romance, cooking, health, etc. The beta version has been launched since September 13, and said that it will offer an application version in late October.
Q & A service “wizball”
Rewards are raised against answers to questioners
4 CAST is a future prediction platform that revitalizes the community by asking subjects to vote for predictions. By participating users to predict based on knowledge and wisdom, they will be able to predict more accurate future. LINK Point is awarded to users who contributed to the activation of the service (the value of the future prediction platform is improved), such as those who voted the earliest. With block chains, both users and operators can not tamper with future predictions and can not control arbitrarily. 4 CAST also offers a beta version from September 4.
Pasha is a product review service that allows you to take pictures of various products around you and review them. You can also search for items, and users who posted or reviewed will be given incentives. Furthermore, users can register products that have not yet been registered in the service, and incentives are also given to it. By shooting photos of products, similar products are presented from image recognition technology. Mr. Masuda explained that it is a “product guidebook made by everyone”. Planned for launch in the fourth quarter of 2018.
tapas is a gourmet review service that can be evaluated by reading the receipt of a restaurant with the camera of tapas with the same mechanism as Pasha. The receipt will be automatically analyzed by the tapas side, it will be possible to review for each menu. Also, since it is based on receipts, it is possible to lower the hurdle of reviews and to prevent arbitrary evaluation by users who do not visit. Here as well, incentives such as posting are given. Planned for launch in the fourth quarter of 2018.
STEP (provisional) is a service that can record memories of travel by photos, location information, tags. Memories are registered in a format called BOOK and you can also publish it. As the number of browsing of the published BOOK increases, the evaluation gets higher and the LINK Point is given. Planned for launch in the fourth quarter of 2018.
In order to receive LINK Point, “dedicated point” to be stored in dApp is necessary
In addition, LINK Point deployed in the country is close to the point, not the virtual currency, according to domestic law, because it does not involve cashing. Therefore, 1 LINK Point is the minimum handling unit. As mentioned above, although 1 LINK Point can be converted to 500 LINE points, it is necessary to accumulate a certain number of unique points given within each dApp service.
In the case of 4 CAST, the point required for exchanging with 1 LINK Point is 5000 4 CAST points. In other words, in order to obtain a LINE point using each dApp service, it is necessary to take the exchange step of dApp points → LINK Point → LINE point. Because LINK is a virtual currency, these steps are not necessary. Also, regarding LINK points of dApp provided by LINE, incentives rather than currency are said to be taken out by LINE.
Only points within dApp are given to the activity. When a certain number is accumulated it can be exchanged for LINK Point
In addition, it is said that monetization of dApp is not much different from applications and the web. The mechanism of the token is mainly based on the effect of raising user’s engagement, which is said to be a pattern to monetize by making advertisement based on it. Also, based on the acquired LINK, EC and content charges that can be used within each platform will also spread to content charging. In LINE, we will continue to provide dApp in the future.
