Description

SeedBomb has two primary goals. Firstly, we are creating an open-source educational media resource called the SeedBank. The SeedBank works as follows: a) Authors suggest article ideas to us for review; b) We confirm that the idea is feasible and negotiate the amount of Seeds (our token) that they would receive in exchange for the article. They then begin writing; c) The Author produces the article and shares the proposed final version with us for review; d) Edits are suggested and made; and e) Having confirmed it is suitable and meets the standard required, we exchange the article for Seeds. The SeedBank provides a great opportunity for anyone interested in developing their reputation as a writer to be able to produce articles while gaining exposure and publicity. The accessibility of the SeedBank also helps those without funding or the licenses required to access high quality research materials for free. In many cases, and certainly in the academic publishing world, writers receive "publicity" while publishers receive the actual financial gain by placing articles behind paywalls and charging membership fees. This restricts the capacity of writers to earn for their efforts and limits access to information for researchers and casual readers. We think this is inherently unfair, so we wanted to find a way of rewarding writers, making education more open and doing good with the ad revenue we could potentially generate. This will help to remove an unfair barrier to education. Secondly, we also use Seeds as part of a quasi-DAO structure in order to make funds available to environmentally focused groups chosen by our community. We do this through our Giving Process, which works in the following way: a) Community members suggest groups who may receive funding in this funding round to our committee. b) Our Committee reviews the applications for feasibility and eligibility, makes certain anti-financial crime, anti-money laundering and fraud checks and prepares a shortlist of groups who may receive funding. c) Our Community then votes on the shortlist using Seeds as a governance token; and d) Votes are calculated and voting is published for transparency. Each group receives the percentage of the total amount of funding available for that round equivalent to the percentage of total votes they received. To bolster the funding for our ASA, we also make use of ad revenues obtained from our SeedBank to support liquidity and price, as well as the Committee NFTs, where 100% of the profits are put back into liquidity. Our committee consists of two City of London legal professionals, a company director, a renewables engineer and a PhD in Earth Sciences. Please check our website for more info on them. How are we using Algorand? On the SeedBank we make use of the Algorand blockchain by minting the articles as NFTs. We have undertaken a legal analysis and decided to do this for the following reasons: a) Proof of Ownership - We can prove online ownership of the original asset. This means that when we build up a reserve of them, they will derive their own value as an asset, which can then be sold on, leveraged for advertising or, hopefully when banks allow it, used as collateral to borrow against. b) Copyright - Each of the NFT articles we buy will have the confirmation that they carry “copyright” as part of their attached notes. This enables the owner as well as any prospective purchaser to have the comfort that they can prove NFT ownership as well as copyright ownership together, in one place. This adds long term value to the asset. c) Transparency - Our Community Members can see which articles we own by searching them on their favourite NFT provider on Algorand. d) Author Royalties - Many authors do not earn ongoing royalties when their online materials are sold and often their articles will be used for free. We feel this is unfair, so any non-Committee authors will also receive royalties on a resale of NFT articles to recognise the effort that they have put in. By using an NFT that is smart contract backed, we can make this process trustless and remove the need for the original author to enforce their rights expensively in a court. We have not included royalty payments on our Committee NFT articles because we have control over the first sale and can choose to add them at that stage, if it is in the best interests of our community. We believe that this can help bring others to the Algorand community who would otherwise not have used this space - particularly those in the ecological space who are not yet aware of "Green Blockchains" and are highly sceptical of blockchains due to the computing power required. In our Giving Process, Seeds are required for voting. We have chosen to structure the Process so that it will be one vote per wallet, meaning that a SeedHolder of any shape and size gets the same say. We are intending to make use of Blockrank or other similar software to show which wallets are connected so that we can restrict voting further and reduce voting manipulation so far as possible. We also feel that the central review process by the Committee should help confirm that groups who are to receive funds have been vetted professionally, though we will make this process fully transparent.