InvArch EduSeries 2: Blockchain’s Bright Light & A Shining Future For IP Rights.
Welcome to the InvArch EduSeries: a series of articles introducing the significance of the InvArch network, explaining its technologies, & highlighting the dire problems it solves!
Earlier this week, we kicked things off by describing the issues of IP rights plaguing the world today in the InvArch EduSeries 1: The IP War Zone & Innovation Graveyard We Live In. This week, we introduce the solutions to these problems in the InvArch EduSeries 2: Blockchain’s Bright Light & A Shining Future For IP Assets. Novel technologies will be proposed & their potential elaborated, where we will then take a closer look at these technologies individually throughout future articles in the InvArch EduSeries.
Less Trust & More Truth: The Next Chapter In IP Rights.
If there is one evident truth about the future of Web3, it’s that on-chain IP rights are inevitable. Blockchain-based technology is founded upon unfettered ownership and the freedom that comes with a lessening dependence on 3rd parties to facilitate transactions. However, it’s best first to understand the most fundamental principle that makes systems like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Polkadot work: all information is validated & then permanently recorded in an immutable ledger. Users can always confirm this information, all the way from the first block of information ever stored.
“Information is validated & then permanently recorded in an immutable ledger.”
For Bitcoin, this is a ledger of a financial system’s data; it consists of balances and records credits & debits. For more complex systems like Ethereum, this is a ledger of an execution environment’s state; it consists of the single state of the network’s virtual machine. For Advanced systems like Polkadot, this is a ledger of collective consensus over the data & state recorded throughout multiple ledgers; it consists of numerous blockchain networks joined together on a single relay.
Blockchain technology has been proven & tested as a solution to trust. With blockchain, trust becomes less a requirement to facilitate a transaction; it becomes a guarantee. If blockchain can be used to confirm the origin of assets and the state of data, what happens when we apply this to the root of IP & the state of their agreements? What if it was possible to verify that an NFT represented ownership over authenticated or unique data? What if copyright agreements (and their absence) were clearly defined? What if both on-chain & legal ownership of IP assets were as liquid as any other digital asset across web3?
The InvArch Network: The IP Rights Parachain Of Polkadot.
InvArch is the first & only IP rights blockchain that is scalable, interoperable, & designed with the potential to one day integrate throughout all of web3. InvArch consists of three (3) unique protocols that allow the network to provide the most powerful, composable, & fluid system for developers to build revolutionary new applications & dApps. They are known as the INV4, OCIF, & XCA protocols.
The INV4 Protocol
The Invention, Involvement, Inventory, & Investment (INV4) protocol provides the foundation & structure for all assets on the InvArch network. This includes data that represents individual files of information (IP Files), collections of interchangeable files organized in sets (IP Sets), pegged fungible assets & sub-assets (IP Tokens), and pegged licensing agreements that define & record copyright ownership.
The OCIF Protocol
The On-Chain Innovation Funding (OCIF) protocol breathes new life into development & helps fuel innovation by directly incentivizing developers & creators of IP Sets. This includes the ability to stake IP Sets to the network in exchange for network fees (IP Staking), the ability to provide IP Tokens in exchange for staking rewards & establish IPT liquidity (IP Farming), and the ability to receive donated staking rewards in the form of a grant that is delivered to an IP Set (IP Donating).
The XCA Protocol
The Cross-Chain Authentication (XCA) protocol taps into the power of the Polkadot network to unleash some of the most potent & unrealized abilities of Cross-Consensus Messaging (XCM) technology. The power of InvArch will be extended to other Parachains on the Polkadot relay via its XCINV4 Modules, which provide native support for IP Assets.
In tandem, the InvArch Parachain will also be connected to the Polkadot relay. Whenever an IP File is minted anywhere throughout the ecosystem, a record of the IP File (which consists of a CID & other various hash-based IDs) is sent to InvArch through the Polkadot relay. Then, it is then indexed & cross-referenced against other IP Files.
The result is a decentralized, transparent, & trustless file authentication protocol. The introduction of future technology, such as Polkadot’s xcm-over-bridges, will allow the XCA protocol to extend its reach to other ecosystems like the Kusama network & beyond!
InvArch reinvents the structure of NFTs & fuses them with IP rights to introduce a new type of digital asset: IP Assets.
A core product of the INV4 protocol is IP Assets, seen in the image above. In its most basic form, an IP Asset consists of an IP Set holding a single IP File, no licensing agreement, & a single IP Token that serves as a medium of ownership over the IP Set. This is the equivalence of your modern-day NFT; it exists inside a collection & with no declared license or attached copyright, it carries the same rights as the NFT License provided by Dapper Labs.
However, with the InvArch network, IP Assets can be much more than any iteration or standard of NFTs. In a more complex form, an IP Asset consists of an IP Set holding several IP Files & even other IP Sets (in this case, called IP SubSets), a pegged licensing agreement defines the copyright ownership & licensing terms of the IP, and a series of several different fungible IP Tokens that are all pegged to the IP Set.
Some IPTs (IPT0) may serve as asset representing ownership (ARO) over an IP Set, some IPTs (IPT1) may serve as utility tokens over within an IP Set, or some IPTs (IPT2) may serve as unique access tokens that give individual admin rights over an IP Set.
What was just summarized in 1–2 paragraphs is the foundation for a genuinely composable ecosystem of interoperable files & folders, streamlined ownership & access rights, tailorable economic models, scalable incentivized proof of attendance, and a new breed of collaboration-based applications for Web3.
The Future With Web3: A Bright New World Of Opportunities.
Introducing new technology is one thing; realizing its power is where things get interesting! Let’s explore the future of dApps with the InvArch network. We’ll kick things off by exploring the flagship application of the InvArch chain, GitArch.
Imagine a decentralized code management & version control hosting platform. Imagine a Git middleware that provides InvArch support for developers using Git on their local devices. GitHub, but without the bane of centralized hosting & risking access to your code during a downtime. More importantly, imagine if GitHub consisted of automatically authenticated files & repositories.
With the XCA protocol, developers will have more control & protection over their code. With the OCIF protocol, developers will be able to stake their repositories (represented as IP Sets) to fund their project via rewards earned from either IP Staking, IP Farming, or IP Donations. We’re not reinventing the wheel for developers — we’re building them a supercar.
Moving beyond the scope of just developers, InvArch can completely revolutionize the music industry. With InvArch, decentralized music studios & record labels will be able to flourish unlike ever before.
Imagine a decentralized GarageBand; we’ll call it DecentralBand. Decentralband could feature the ability for individual artists to contribute their music files (.WAV) to produce a track consisting of multiple individual artists’ beats, rifts, audio, & more. Individuals can retain their IP, jointly own the IP rights to a track, and share peace in having the logic of royalty allocations handled by a smart contract.
A community could design a record label that features sub-assets; one tier of IP Tokens would represent ownership over the label. Another tier of IP Tokens could represent voting rights or royalty allocations. There could even be a third tier of IP Tokens earned based on contributions that increase the royalty percentage of their holder; once a minimum threshold is achieved, those IP Tokens could even be exchanged for tier 1 IP Tokens that represent the actual ownership of the record label.
InvArch even completely changes the world of opportunities for NFT artists & NFT Copyright owners. One day, a 3rd party product marketplace & copyright licensing hub could be a massive economic market on InvArch. A platform where individuals can lease, rent, or otherwise transfer the rights to allow individuals to create 3rd party products based on NFTs.
With the BAYC purchasing the CryptoPunk & Meebits NFT collections, just like with the BAYC NFTs, their holders will also hold the copyrights to their NFTs. With InvArch, all of those NFT holders will be able to create on-chain agreements extending the use of their NFT in a 3rd party product; this can be via an individual retailer or even something such as a massive retailer striking up deals. In the end, you have a marketplace where communities can buy swag & products relevant to their interests & community passions; a market where artists & NFT copyright owners can establish lucrative income streams from their NFTS & increase the raw value of their digital assets. A CryptoPunk Tibetan Rug? Easy as 1, 2, 3.
Capping off these examples on a humanitarian note, InvArch allows for decentralized research protection & funding. A DAO can quickly establish using InvArch; funding the IP development of various fields & focuses. There are current examples of this today, like VitaDAO, which focuses on funding longevity research; however, here’s how VitaDAO on InvArch would be even more powerful.
Imagine if having your research funded by a DAO didn’t mean signing over your actual IP rights (as is the case with VitaDAO, currently). Imagine if contributing to a project didn’t earn you the same value as someone who merely bought their way in. Imagine if you could have one asset for DAO governance, another asset for participation (which could provide a percentage boost to the rate at which governance tokens are earned), and a third asset that represents IP Rights. You now have a completely flexible DAO for research funding that can provide customized funding terms & agreements and one that can more appropriately recognize & reward the actual participants of the DAO & the projects it funds.
We could go on about a decentralized platform for social collaboration & IP development. There’s an employee contribution tracking, proof of attendance, & trustless incentive agreements that your local human resources professional would fall in love with. We could even discuss a modular code library & development editor that features drag & drop code modules for building dApps; however, we’ll leave the world of possibilities for the world to discover.
What’s important to understand is this: InvArch isn’t just another blockchain to launch smart contracts; InvArch brings new technology to the forefront of Web3 and allows for the creation of new dApps that simply were not possible until now.
Looking Towards The Future & The Next InvArch EduSeries.
The world that we live in today is better than the world of yesterday, but it is still far from being the world of tomorrow that we need now. Blockchain technology has been making significant progress with IP rights; however, there are still many hurdles to overcome.
The excellent news, InvArch is coming. A composable framework for IP Assets designed to unlock a new world of possibilities for collaboration & dApps. With the InvArch network, innovation roadblocks can be torn down & a new development highway left in their place.
While InvArch may be powerful, it introduces a lot of new technologies. No need to worry, though! The remaining focus of the InvArch EduSeries will be dedicated to breaking down InvArch technology & explaining how it all works.
Is InvArch powerful? Absolutely!
Is it interesting? We sure hope so!
How does it all work? Tune in this Wednesday for the InvArch EduSeries 3: Web3’s Super Highway & The Future Of Transporting IP Rights to find out!
