Latest posts of: Factom Protocol

Factom Protocol

A Data-Centric Platform for Decentralized Applications

About

The Factom protocol is an open source data integrity protocol built by a coalition of technology companies that extends the security of blockchain to any type of data. Development began in 2014 and the previous Bitcointalk thread can be found here. With the release of Milestone 3, the Factom Protocol became one of the most decentralized blockchain projects in existence. As there was no longer any central authority to update the previous Bitcointalk thread, it became outdated. Therefore, the Factom Protocol Marketing Committee will be regularly updating this thread and shares this login.

As a pure data blockchain protocol, the use cases are limitless. For example, Equator, a leading provider of residential loan default software and marketing solutions for many of the country's top mortgage servicers, real estate agents and vendors recently signed with Factom Inc. This video below showcases how the Factom Protocol can be utilized to revolutionize the mortgage industry. But this is the tip of the iceberg.

Token and Tokenomics

While the Factom Protocol is a two token system, only the Factoid (FCT) is transferable and able to be traded on exchanges. Entry Credits (EC) are obtained by burning FCT and are used to enter data into the Factom Protocol. Entry Credits are $.001 each and that price is fixed. Therefore, if FCT is worth $1.00 and you burn it, you receive 1,000 EC. If FCT is worth $10.00 each and you burn one, you receive 10,000 EC. This brilliant two token system allows for:

1. The value of FCT to increase the more the Factom Protocol is utilized.
2. Companies and governments can effectively budget for entering data onto the Protocol based upon their estimated usage.
3. Subscription systems can be setup with 3rd parties where companies and governments don't have to hold cryptocurrency if they don't want to or can't for compliance reasons. FCT are still burned for EC by the 3rd party company but the subscriber is charged a small markup for the service.

Major Exchanges

Bilaxy | VCC.Exchange | Poloniex | Bittrex

Empowering Business and Government

By providing high throughput, low fixed cost, and secure data entry that easily integrates with your existing systems, the Factom protocol solves the data integrity needs of today. Using Blockchain technology, the Factom protocol enables efficient, immutable publication of data, benefiting people and companies by providing a source of data integrity and verification to all parties. Learn more.

Technologies

The Factom protocol enables developers to build powerful open source technologies and infrastructures using its efficient pure data structures. The Factom protocol’s unique two-token system lowers the barrier for enterprise companies to build applications that require cost stability and ease of integration with existing system

Tokenization
The Factom Asset Token protocol (FAT protocol) is an open source tokenization protocol built on the Factom blockchain that is efficient, modular, composable, and extensible allowing developers to layer token functionality to meet their specific use case. The FAT protocol is built around a set of open source standards that establish a pure-data tokenization implementation directly within the efficient data structure of the Factom blockchain. Learn more.

Voting Protocols
Flexible on-chain voting protocols integrate seamlessly into your applications with a variety of voting systems. Quickly and easily enable your applications with with the most cost effective fully audit-able, immutable, and censorship resistant blockchain voting protocol. Learn more.

Smart Contracts
The Factom protocol enables a myriad of smart contract technologies. Build cheap and fully auditable stand alone smart contracts that keep all of your data private, or integrate into the FAT protocol to create self executing smart contracts.

Identity Solutions
The factom protocol is the optimal platform to build identity solutions, and provides a robust set of infrastructure for digital identities. With the factom protocol’s pure data implementation it’s easy to build decentralized identifiers, auditable attestations, and self sovereign identities.

Many more to come!

Developers

- Developer Portal
- Factom Developer Sandbox Setup Guide - The Factom equivalent of Testnet3 in bitcoin, but doesn't require finding testnet coins.
- Factom Docs
- Factom Open API - A lightweight REST API for the Factom blockchain. It connects to an existing factomd node and has a built-in Factom wallet.
- Testnet - How to get started with the Factom Testnet
- Factom.js - An interface to factomd API to make it super simple to query, create transactions, chains and entries.
- joi-factom - a convenient tool to make the development of Factom applications easier for JavaScript developers. It extends Joi, a popular JS object schema validation library, to add the ability to validate common Factom identifiers: Factoid addresses, Entry Credit addresses, and digital identity keys. One use case is to ensure that the user input of your program is valid.
- FAT Protocol - A tokenization and smart contract platform on top of Factom that is cheaper and more flexible than any other such platform.
- Python Client Library - Provides Python clients for interacting with the factomd and factom-walletd APIs. The API client is fully tested under Python 2.7, 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6, and likely works with other versions as well.
- Factom-ObjectDB - Factom ObjectDB is a blockchain database implemented in NodeJS, built on Factom
- A rust client for the Factom APi - Here are the docs.
- Java Enterprise Client Library - Java Library integrates Java (JEE & Spring) with the Factom blockchain
- Factom Storage - Store and retrieve files from the Factom blockchain.
- C#/.NET Library - The .NET-library supports the complete factomd- and walletd-API.
- Factom Open Node - Factom Open Node is a public, decentralized, load balanced factomd-node which provides an API to interact with the Factom blockchain protocol.

Authority Node Operators

A coalition of 28 (eventually 65+) companies called Authority Node Operators (ANOs) provide the infrastructure to decentralize the Factom Protocol. These companies also "further the protocol" in whatever way they pledged. If they do not provide stable infrastructure or do not further the Protocol, they can be removed. In return for their services, these companies split 73,000 FCT per month which provides a minor inflation for the protocol. This inflation is reduced by usage of the Protocol as, in order to enter data into Protocol, you have to burn FCT for Entry Credits.

View the current Authority Node Operators.

Committees and Working Groups

Due to the Factom Protocol being one of the most decentralized blockchain projects in existence with no central authority to make decisions, a series of committees and working groups were established to handle various tasks. These committees are made up of people from Authority Node Operators and members of the community. The current committees are:

- Core and Technical Committee
- Documentation Committee
- Exchange Committee
- Legal Committee
- Marketing Committee

Grants

Authority Node Operators select an "efficiency" by which they operate at. Whatever efficiency they choose, of the 1,123 FCT they are to receive per server per month, that percentage of FCT is instead placed in the Factom Protocol Grant Pool. Every few months a new grant round starts where people and companies can submit their grant proposals for ways to further the Factom Protocol. The last grant saw more than 140,000 FCT awarded worth well over 1 million dollars. The recently awarded grants were:

- Decentralized Identifiers
- Factom Core Development
- Factom Protocol Website
- Bug Bounty Program
- Open Source Alfresco Integration
- Factom Protocol Courtesy Node
- Ledger Nano S Factom Identity
- Core Development
- Factom Asset Token Protocol
- Marketing Committee
- Exchange Listing Fees
- Anchor Master
- Oracle Master
- G Suite Service
- Guide Compensation

If you have an idea as to how you can further the Factom Protocol, be sure to keep an eye out for the next grant round.

These are exciting times for the Factom Protocol. We hope you'll take a deep dive and learn more about what we have to offer.