Neutral, Trustless PoW-backed ICOs
When creating a new Ethereum Token, you are given a distinct choice.
- The contract can be ‘Owned’ by a specific individual (you), meaning it is non-neutral, centralized, and will give you specific advantages. Like starting with all of the tokens in your account.
2. The contract can be ‘Non-Owned’, meaning that it is fair and equal to everyone, similar to the way Bitcoin works. Neutral.
During the first generation of ICOs, the vast majority of new tokens were creating using the ‘Type 1’ model. This gave certain lucky individuals vast amounts of power, allowing many to scam others and steal vast amounts of money from them. However, those times are over. Moving forward, I argue that all future Ethereum ICOs should adopt a ‘Type 2’ model in which a contract is Neutral and gives no advantages to anyone.
It is extremely easy to build a neutral ‘Type 2’ token contract. Here is one, called Energy Token (EGY):
https://etherscan.io/address/0x90b2228f40deaebaa83104776803eaff9f43c063#code
This token is backed by PoW, it is scarce and hard capped, and it is ownerless. It is trustless and neutral, such that nobody and no ethereum account has any special powers or ever had any advantage with regards to the token in any way, shape or form. Nobody started with any of the tokens, like how Satoshi started with no Bitcoins as that network came online 11 years ago.
To mint new Energy Tokens, anyone can call the MutateTokens() method which will burn 0xBTC tokens and mint them the same number of Energy tokens. It is a simple one-way conversion, like an ICO, except pure solidity.
Since it is entirely human-neutral, you can be assured that everyone is on an equal playing field. Furthermore, there is no central point of failure and no potential for corruption. An unlimited number of new tokens can follow this model and therefore propel the Ethereum ecosystem into one where trustlessness and neutrality is at the absolute forefront. That is the Ethereum that we all deserve.
