The Boson Protocol Challenge
Since the first bank was established in 1472, financial institutions have remained the lifeblood of the world’s economy [1]. And in recent years, trade and industry have expanded more and more towards digital commerce, opening a myriad of market opportunities. This has birthed further influx and migration to e-commerce, making it a dominant force in business.
What Is the Problem with the Current Set Up?
However, like banks, the market has now been monopolized by powerful e-commerce platforms. These third party intermediaries extract excess profits and hoard data from consumers, necessitating high trust and increasing costs [2]. The current centralized system in place is designed to maintain monopoly and discourage competition, not to mention how it distorts the market and supply chain.
What Is the Alternative?
According to the World Bank, 1.7 billion people globally are unbanked. However, two-thirds of them own a mobile phone, giving them access to decentralized finance, which aims to provide a fairer, more affordable alternative for consumers. According to DeFi Pulse, the total value locked in decentralized finance protocols has soared since the start of 2020 [3]. This means that more and more people are becoming aware that there are better, more equitable options available, options that make their capital work for them.
What Role Does Boson Protocol Play?
Commerce is a human endeavor that should not have its value captured by the few. — Justin Banon, Boson Protocol CEO
Boson Protocol is a promising DeFi platform that enables smart contracts to exchange crypto assets for physical products and services that is fully automated [4]. This means there is only minimal human intervention needed, eliminating centralized intermediaries and arbitrators. This project’s aim is to design and enable a decentralized commerce or d-commerce ecosystem. How this is done is by automating digital to physical redemptions by tokenizing commitments to trade real world Things (products, services and real world items) as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In this way, Boson Protocol intends to be the bridge connecting smart contracts to real world commerce using a decentralized infrastructure that is incentivized and easily accessible to all.
This progressive and automated framework allows for cost-effective and reliable transactions that directly benefit both sellers and buyers while eliminating the involvement of third-party giants. There is a demo here [5], which gives a broad and introductory picture of what Boson Protocol is capable of.
Now What?
Boson Protocol is developing a planetary-level Web3 data marketplace, which will be integral in further expanding the existing platform by building software, applications, tools and integrations. Overseen by leading crypto-economic experts, Boson Protocol has taken on the enormous challenge of providing a radical solution to a systemic problem and it’s exciting to see how they make it happen.
[1] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-oldest-operational-banks-in-the-world.html
[2] https://www.bosonprotocol.io/?fbclid=IwAR3XGPVpZryo7IGcJGu6cWHu6j3l4HxZ4WfPiBS1gNWpWfu8MIb_gvxDE6w
[3] https://currency.com/what-does-defi-mean-ultimate-guide#:~:text=Well%
[4] https://icomarks.com/ico/boson-protocol/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsVXGvaFz7U
