Boson Protocol core principles
Certain general properties of the protocol stem from the requirements which carefully follow Boson Protocol’s vision from its inception:
- Open and fair – the protocol is being designed and built in a progressively decentralized fashion, which dictates that even early design decisions take decentralization into account.
- Permissionless – the protocol is public infrastructure for commerce which anyone can use.
- Simple – the protocol is simple enough for end users and understandable enough for developers.
- Reliable and available – in order to be used as ubiquitous commerce infrastructure, the protocol is built natively in the Web3 ecosystem.
- Efficient – the protocol minimizes the cost and number of on-chain transactions.
- Optimistic – the protocol makes optimistic assumptions that the happy path will be followed.
- Automated – the main dispute resolution payload is handled by the Mutual Resolution game theoretic mechanism, with escalation to a semi-trusted third party (sTTP) Dispute Resolver by exception only.
- Trust-minimized – involves, for escalated disputes only, an Escalated Dispute Resolver (EDR) who is a commoditized service provider with minimal market power.
- Cost-mutualized – the cost of the escalated disputes is mutualized across multiple Seller transactions to reduce the cost impact, especially on low value transactions.
Boson v2: features and benefits
There are several differences between versions 1 and 2 of Boson Protocol. The salient ones are described below:
- Human intervention – v1 coordinates commerce without human intervention, but it introduces a malicious buyer attack vector. v2 seeks to resolve the main burden of disputes using algorithmic game theory, with escalation to a human dispute resolver (DR) as an exception only. Even in the limit where all disputes are mutually resolved, the role of the DR is still important. This is because the mere presence of a ‘watcher’ changes the game theory and blocks attack vectors which are impossible to counter without the presence of at least a semi-trusted third party.
- Optimistic vs Pessimistic Design – In v1 the Buyer is required to sign the exchange finalization transaction, thus degrading the UX and complicating the protocol. v2 on the other hand assumes optimistic exchange finalization: unless a signal to the contrary is received, the system assumes the happy path.
- Simplicity – The change in the human intervention approach and the optimistic design significantly simplifies the protocol design, improves efficiency and the UX. The reduced number of states in the protocol makes it more practical and commercially acceptable.
- Trust-minimization – Both versions displace market and financial intermediaries. But v2 takes the property of trust-minimization one step further and enables detailed agreements of the exchange, so that the counterparty can explicitly review and agree to the terms, and then be confident that the decentralized protocol will enforce them.
- Cost-optimization – The simplified and optimistic design of the v2 results in fewer transactions, therefore optimizing the cost of the protocol operations.
- Improved Deposit Model – When participating in an exchange, Buyers and Sellers have skin in the game. In addition to the Buyer’s payment amount for the item, v1 asks for dual-sided deposits to be put in the escrow. v2 only needs a Seller’s deposit and a single payment amount from the Buyer (which implicitly covers the potential penalty). This model is both cognitively simpler and it requires no extra funds to be locked away.
- Bundling / Twinning mechanism – v2 provides a novel bundling mechanism that allows selling multiple items in the same Offer, e.g. a physical item and a digital NFT-twin.
Read on: download our v2 whitepaper
Boson enables the decentralized exchange of physical assets- tokenized as redeemable NFTs.
The launch is planned later this year, and over the coming weeks, we will be releasing additional information about what Boson is, how it works, and how you can build on the protocol, and participate as either buyer, seller or integrator.
To read more in our white paper, you can download it here
