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Real-world use case
Team with prior experience in the field of operation
NFTs instead of tokenization
Vast application and wide market potential

Unique approach to solving decentralized commerce
Enabling users to monetize their data
Competent team

Still in early development
No public token economics
No MVP

If the project takes on the higher market share of the current global commerce it can become the backbone of future marketplaces

The project can experience a failure if it doesn’t deliver on its promise and doesn’t provide a working protocol

Boson protocol is building a Web3 dCommerce primitive for conducting commerce in a decentralized autonomous way, integrating real-world commerce and its data with smart contracts. Instead of using centralized market coordinators that serve as intermediaries between buyers and sellers, Boson Protocol offers a solution to perform these transactions in a trustless way that minimizes human arbitration.

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency whose transactions are irreversible. This means that another transaction must be generated in the case of customer dissatisfaction, fraud, or refund request. There’s no escrow or a dispute mechanism that can facilitate commerce with having in mind user protection. Also, if the seller is to make a refund, he would have to incur a loss in transaction fees in order to send back the money.

Problems like these require a middleware solution on top of the existing layer-1 infrastructure (Currently Boson uses Ethereum) that will provide these additional functionalities to cryptocurrency transactions in order to render them useful for the exchange of real-world goods or services.

The protocol will provide an SDK and composable dCommerce lego bricks for developers to enable marketplaces, centralized and decentralized exchanges, DeFi projects, and virtual worlds to add dCommerce functionality to their businesses. . Boson enables builders by providing software development kits and grants (via a dCommerce DAO) for the development of these applications as a means to disrupt, demonopolize and democratize commerce.

The core of the technology utilizes Non-Fungible Tokens in a novel way:ommitment Tokens, which represent the commitment to transact a Thing (product or service) in the real-world. Being built in this way, the Boson protocol aims at fostering an ecosystem of decentralized applications that will power the new dCommerce future.

In order to succeed in these efforts, Boson Protocol provides a composable dCommerce stack and is developing a library of developer tools and reference applications such as a decentralized marketplace for Things and a p2p app for real-world redemption. Its dCommerce DAO is a community-governed DAO for funding projects which build these applications in the Boson Protocol ecosystem.

Boson protocol connects the on-chain exchange of vouchers with the off-chain delivery of goods and services. The on-chain activity is performed on the Ethereum platform at the very start, but there are plans to mitigate and expand to other blockchains like Solana. The Boson Protocol's primary purpose is to manage the life cycle of vouchers and the accompanying swap mechanism. It positions itself as a middleware infrastructure.

The exchange will be done atomically, meaning a swap should be done automatically, and the NFT voucher will be redeemed upon the physical delivery of products. A smart-contract that is fed the data through an API will autonomously conduct the transaction.

Since this transaction process is on-chain and doesn’t guarantee that the real-world exchange will be done through the Boson protocol which uses its Boson token as a means of incentivizing the transaction. It is built around promises with the transaction in question being tied up with its represented NFT token. A good or a service is promised to be delivered, usually with a time delay, by the issuer of the promise, under the promised conditions, to the holder of that promise.

The core exchange mechanism

The automation of the arbitration system of the core exchange mechanism implements a 2-sided deposit structure. This ensures that both sides of the transaction have skin in the game. In addition, a lightweight reputation system will be implemented to increase the incentivization for the delivery of promise. This arbitration system is designed to automate the mediation of disputes and mitigate reversal losses.

The objective function of the system is to maximize the supply of high-quality voucher redemptions. It works as follows:

The seller makes an offer. He sets the requirements, and the voucher is minted into existence. Then he makes a deposit and sets the required buyer's deposit amount.

The buyer can accept the offer by signing a committed transaction. After that, the buyer payment, seller deposit, and buyer deposit are escrowed.

Deposit amounts vary with each transaction, and they form a part of the commercial terms of the exchange. They are set by the seller and accepted by the buyer.

When the buyer receives the goods, he unilaterally signs a redemption transaction. If the redemption transaction is signed, the system will transfer the buyer's payment amount to the seller.

As a platform for building decentralized marketplace applications that automates the redemption of digital rights for physical assets using NFTs, Boson protocol targets developers and marketplace projects that are in need of tools and funds for development. With DeFi composability in mind, it also targets cryptocurrency exchanges, namely providing crypto rewards rewards

In addition to the transactions between humans, the protocol keeps in mind the future IoT technology and autonomous commerce associated with that. For example, you can run out of milk. Your smart refrigerator can make an order for a new supply on the marketplace, or your car needs a new set of tires that it orders automatically upon meeting certain conditions. By minimizing human arbitration, transaction costs, and friction, the number of commercial transactions between devices and agents plugged into the Open Thing Economy could explode.

Instead of tokenizing these goods and services, the platform takes on a different approach with the utilization of Non-fungible commitment tokens (NFTs) that act as vouchers for the purchase and can be viewed as a form of futures contracts. They can be redeemed for the underlying transaction’s value or can be left to expire as a futures contract would. In this way, they act as a future commitment to transact.

Another vital component is commercial data exchange and management that can be used on the merchant side in order to inform them of consumers’ behavior, which is currently monopolized by big marketplace companies such as Amazon. This data includes customer demographics, product preference, but also sellers’ reputation, which can be used to make better-informed decision making on both sides. Boson Protocol leverages the design and infrastructure of Data Tokens, created by Ocean Protocol, to monetize commerce data in a way that protects the privacy and self-sovereignty of network participants.

Boson protocol’s primal use case serves as an arbitration mechanism between buyers and a seller. It offers dispute mediation in a fully decentralized and autonomous way, with human mediation serving only as a last resort solution.

With its technology and features, its use case can be found anywhere where there is a need for mediation and where there is an exchange of non-monetary for monetary value. These include:

Online commerce - purchasing of goods and services
Voucher distribution of non-monetary value - through the NFT tokens that represent a voucher for future transactions.
Machine-to-machine commerce - IoT technology for the further such as autonomous vehicles and smart appliances.
Loyalty and rewards - for example, gift cards, credit card rewards, and other incentive-based transactions.
Games and gaming - purchasing in-game items, gifts, skins, and/or exchanging them later for real-world items.
Crypto exchanges - to differentiate on rewards rather than compete on fees and enable exchange users to purchase real-world items directly from an exchange marketplace, without having to convert crypto back to fiat currency.
Service bookings - like booking restaurant services, accommodation, and groceries.

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Justin Banon

CEO & Co-Founder

studied Physics at the Imperial College London and is a digital business model researcher with a background in various leadership and consulting positions. Prior to starting Boson Protocol he was MD at Priority Pass, the company known for its airport lounges. He blitzscalled that company from a $50m business to a $1bn platform.

Gregor Borosa

Tech Co-Founder

has a background in computer science, business informatics and digital currencies. Previously he worked in central and commercial banks, leading engineering teams.

Po Tang

CFO

senior executive with over 30 years’ leadership experience as a CFO. He has worked in both listed and unlisted multinational billion-dollar companies with an extensive business and commercial experiences in Advertising, Marketing, Loyalty, Travel, Technology, e-Commerce, Airport lounges (Priority Pass) and the Sports sector.

Bruno Ahualli

Marketing Director

has 20+ years experience in marketing and ecommerce and specializes in conversion rate optimization, branding and digital engagement, serving enterprise and startups worldwide.

Guy Davies

Business Development

has over 15+ years in business development and commercial sales experience, specialising in discerning nascent markets and delivering business strategies. He entered the blockchain space in 2017.

Toby Clemson

Head of Engineering

holds a MSci Physics with Theoretical Physics from Imperial College London and has over a decade of experience in technology. He work directly with the development team and leads technology strategy.

Akaki Mamageishvili

Lead Researcher

come from a background in mathematics and computer science. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science at ETH Zurich where he is currently a senior researcher in microeconomic theory.

Micarla Sullivan

Head of Product

business and product strategist with 15 years of experience in digital technology. Holds a Bachelor of Business Management and a Bachelor of Information Technology from University Queensland, Australia and is an Agile practitioner, lean start-up and design thinking.

Past Events

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Token Model, and NFTs

Boson implements its token model around the notion of increasing voucher redemptions. To provide the incentive to do so, it uses its native Boson token (BOSON) which is the platform's utility token. The platform gives the BOSON token as a reward to both the buyer and the seller if the transaction was successful. Also by staking the token as a deposit behind the commitment buyers and sellers may reduce their network fees for coordination of transactions.

Incentivization of successful value exchange is the key BOSON token use case. It is therefore used to reward the supply side e.g aggregators, sellers, and curators for supply acquisition and supply quality. On the demand side, relayer marketplaces are rewarded for distribution of inventory by earning fees and buyers for data sharing in return for the percentage of the value it creates.

Users stake behind those NFT commitment tokens, which they think will generate transaction value at an acceptable level of quality and make a prediction. If the transaction is successful, they are rewarded with the BOSON token in the amount that depends on the amount staked, the timing of the stake (with increased rewards for early stakes), and the actual transaction value and quality. In addition, BOSON token is used in paying fees for coordinating transactions or when a third party accesses data via the Boson Web3 data marketplace.

Note: at the time of writing, there isn’t any specific information on the Boson token’s economic model like the circulating supply, emission rate, how the token is created, and so on. This will surely be released in the future with further project’s progress.

NFTs are the core token component of the Boson protocol. The project takes on a different approach than traditional tokenization. Instead of the token representing the service, it is represented by a non-fungible commitment token that works as a futures contract as it represents a promise that the value exchange is going to occur in the future. They are implemented as stateful tokens whose states change as they flow through Boson’s core exchange mechanism.

It can be redeemed if the transaction was successful, it can be refunded in case of a reversal, or it can be left expired.

They are universal, interoperable, composable, programmable, transferable, storable, and stateful. This means that they can represent any product, good, or service delivered both in physical or digital form. As they are stateful, it is ideal to coordinate commerce. They can represent more than one product, and can be part of bundles, each representing a real-world product or service. Users can store them and transfer them between each other, which makes them tradable.

Boson protocol aims to power the eCommerce market and bring real-world products on the blockchain. It is currently estimated that the eCommerce market generated 3.53 trillion US dollars in 2019 alone and is projected to grow to 6.54 trillion US dollars by 2022.

As per the stats of the website, it is estimated that the whole global commerce is around 30 trillion US dollars in size. Considering that the Boson protocol enables exchanging monetary with non-monetary value in a broad sense, it isn’t only limited to eCommerce and can find application and adoption anywhere where there is a need in this 30T market.

Currently, there aren’t many blockchain projects that strive to power commerce in a decentralized way, and more so, what makes Boson unique is the voucher-based approach instead of tokenization. This brings it into a distinguished positioning and could result in taking a big chunk in the eCommerce market share, especially if the general adoption of cryptos increases.

Ocean Protocol

Ocean Protocol allows users to create a decentralized marketplace, composed of data assets and services that can be exchanged by users.

Orion Protocol

Orion Protocol is the first gateway to the entire crypto market: aggregating every CEX, DEX, and swap pool into one decentralized platform.

Gahter Network

Gather is a platform that allows publishers to monetize without ads and provides businesses & developers access to cheap and reliable processing power.

The biggest social media presence Boson has is on Twitter followed by its Telegram. Even though similar announcements are made on both channels Telegram users engage more with the content and are more likely to discuss and interact with one another. The smallest of them all by the number of followers of their YouTube channel which is reasonable considering that the content they provide isn’t all that suitable for a video format.

References and important to read articles

Website: https://www.bosonprotocol.io/

Lightpaper: https://docsend.com/view/p7g9u8d8wiwnf9jn

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