Introducing App Coins(blog.assemblymade.com)
blog.assemblymade.com
Introducing App Coins
http://blog.assemblymade.com/introducing-app-coins
1 comments
Hey JD, some great questions.
Q: How many AppCoins are there per app? Is this established at the beginning or can more coins be minted along the way?
A: The default is an app starts with 0 coins but this can be adjusted. Currently an app's coins are inflationary with no cap. Which means as new work is done, new coins are minted. Because a real product and its growth backs each coin, it doesn't appear to make sense to create scarcity.
Q: How is this enforced? Is it distributed? Does it exist on the blockchain in some way?
A: Today its tracked in Assembly for each app in a ledger thats downloadable by anyone (see assemblymade.com/helpful/log.csv as an example of one product's log). We think future blockchain technology is promising.
Q: Is there a market for AppCoins? Are they tradable? Or are they only dispensed by the project creator?
A: Each app has its own core team (like in OSS). They are responsible for setting vision, quality standards, and ultimately accepting which work makes it into the product and mints new coins. There's no market yet. Trading App Coins opens up some thorny legal issues that we're working through.
Q: Is the revenue share enforced in some way? Legally? Programmatically?
A: Legally through our binding TOS and programmatically; we publish all of each app's revenue and expenses so that anybody can verify the integrity of the payout.
Q: How many AppCoins are there per app? Is this established at the beginning or can more coins be minted along the way?
A: The default is an app starts with 0 coins but this can be adjusted. Currently an app's coins are inflationary with no cap. Which means as new work is done, new coins are minted. Because a real product and its growth backs each coin, it doesn't appear to make sense to create scarcity.
Q: How is this enforced? Is it distributed? Does it exist on the blockchain in some way?
A: Today its tracked in Assembly for each app in a ledger thats downloadable by anyone (see assemblymade.com/helpful/log.csv as an example of one product's log). We think future blockchain technology is promising.
Q: Is there a market for AppCoins? Are they tradable? Or are they only dispensed by the project creator?
A: Each app has its own core team (like in OSS). They are responsible for setting vision, quality standards, and ultimately accepting which work makes it into the product and mints new coins. There's no market yet. Trading App Coins opens up some thorny legal issues that we're working through.
Q: Is the revenue share enforced in some way? Legally? Programmatically?
A: Legally through our binding TOS and programmatically; we publish all of each app's revenue and expenses so that anybody can verify the integrity of the payout.
I don't see any mention of these "AppCoins" being a decentralized crypto-currency. It's kind of interesting that you assumed that. I did too. It shows how our perspectives have been changed by Bitcoin's existence.
If you google "AppCoin" ~90% of results are decentralized crypto-currency related. That's also the context that Naval and Fred Wilson have used it in. It's a bit weird to see it used in another context.
The Appcoin that google brings up seems to be unrelated to assemblymade.com. e.g. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=475160.0 , so who knows how "app coins" from assemblymade actually work. I would guess it isn't a decentralised cryptocurrency, just a token to be used on the site.
Some questions I have right off the bat: