As we move into 2024, many businesses built around blockchain ecosystems are now becoming application centric. This means that the focus is shifting from the underlying infrastructure (the blockchains) to the DApps (decentralized applications that run on the blockchain). Some well known examples of tech stacks for building scalable DApps connected to Ethereum are the Polygon SDK and Optimism’s OP-Stack.
Polkadot 2.0 is also changing their concentration away from the parachains to the application layer. This will advance their goal of having an elastic, interoperable, and ubiquitous (multi-core) virtual machine.
These examples are public permissionless blockchains. Remember, public blockchains can be accessed and viewed by anyone, while private blockchains can only be viewed by verified users approved by an administrator. Permissioned blockchains can have properties of both public and private networks, allowing developers to build customizable solutions where anyone can submit a request to join the blockchain, and receive certain permissions to interact with the network.
Today, we are going to dive into a forgotten fork of Substrate (the framework for Polkadot) that serves as the foundation for multiple permissioned blockchains. This overlooked framework has been built into two separate blockchain Consortiums with a combined market cap reaching over $400 million at the time of this writing.
To understand the significance of this, one must understand the concept of a traditional Consortium and how it applies to a consortium blockchain. A Consortium is a group of companies that have come together with a shared objective, sometimes in a legally-binding contract.
The blockchain framework I will be discussing is PLUG… so please stick around and “plug in”, because I am going to cover the details of the PLUGnet toolkit and the two Consortiums that have built permissioned and private blockchain networks upon this framework; Centrality a.k.a. CENNZnet, The Root Network, and JASMY.
PLUG, PLUGnet Toolkit, & Evolution into Ottó
PLUGnet is a Multi-Chain Synthetic Asset Network that was conceived in 2018. The purpose of PLUGnet is “to enable application-specific networks to be built and connected”. The major focus of PLUG is in creating a realistic approach to decentralization by “looking to offer practical steps to change the nature of intermediaries and move decentralization forward.”
The key feature of PLUGnet is the “rich layers of permissions embedded into smart contracts and runtime modules”, known as the Doughnut Protocol. The term “Doughnut” was chosen because it is, essentially, a decentralized cookie. The repository from GitHub states: “Doughnuts are Proofs of Delegation between two or more cryptographic keypairs. Doughnuts let us prove that one address delegates something to another address.”
OK… so what does this mean? Through contract access control and identity/fee delegation, the PLUG framework supports:
- Easily signing in and out of DApps without using centralized services
- Giving untrusted DApps limited permissions on-chain
- Separating the transaction fees from the transaction sender
- Sharing access to user accounts and tokens in a protected and managed way
- Creating legal contracts that are written off-chain, but execute on-chain
To summarize, the Doughnuts are cryptographically verifiable access tokens, carrying permissions, generated off-chain. These powerful tools enable Ricardian-style Smart Contracts, which are contracts that “place the defining elements of a legal agreement in a format that can be expressed and executed in software.” Think user-friendly simplified smart contracts.
It should be noted that PLUG is part of the Centrality Consortium and that their Doughnut Protocol patent has been issued. Centrality plans on opening the patent through the Crypto Open Patent Alliance so that any network can use Doughnuts!
Looking at the $PLUG token chart… It looks like another dead blockchain, but when you realize that the token’s sole utility right now is to burn into the same developers’ new blockchain, it gives a whole new perspective. This new permissioned network is the Ottó Blockchain.
The Ottó Blockchain is “the first KYC-compliant, Curated Smart Finance blockchain. Ottó leverages NFT identity attestation to signal to developers, custodians, and other market participants that every user has been identified, while allowing users to maintain privacy. Their identity delegation through NFT technology also enables developers to build applications that utilize synthetic multi-chain assets, while keeping the underlying digital assets stored safely and securely with a custodian.”
Ottó is secured through staking their Catalyst token ($CATA), and the rewards are paid in $OTTO, which is used to mint more Catalyst at an ever-increasing price for every Catalyst minted. $OTTO is also used for gas and governance on the blockchain. Anybody can submit KYC for identity verification, and burn $PLUG from Ethereum for $OTTO on their native blockchain at a rate of 25:1. For now, this is a burn-in mechanism only, meaning $CATA and $OTTO can not be sent out of their native blockchain and exchanged for other tokens in a CEX or DEX.
Now let’s rollback to the first network to build upon the PLUG framework, Centrality’s CENNZnet.
Centrality: CENNZnet, ROOT, & FutureVerse
The Centrality Consortium is based out of New Zealand and has been working with their government on safe digital identity by joining the Digital Identity NZ collective. The Co-Founder and CEO is Aaron McDonald, Rob from Digital Asset News held an interview with Aaron in July 2021 regarding SYLO, a decentralized communication protocol, which is also part of the Centrality Consortium. Aaron’s brother, Jeff McDonald, is leading the development of the Ottó Blockchain mentioned earlier. It’s a family affair with the other Founder and brother, David McDonald, leading Centrality Japan as CEO. And no.. There is no relation between this McDonald family and the global burger franchise.
“CENNZnet is the first natively permissioned blockchain in the world and is a fully decentralized public blockchain optimized for consumer DApps with a Layer-2 that acts as a side chain for Ethereum. CENNZnet was built to unlock blockchain functionality for all developers and enable highly secure, fast, and creative DApp projects to thrive.”
CENNZnet runs on a dual token economy: CENNZ for staking and governance and CPAY as stable gas for network transactions and block rewards.
CENNZnet has more than 30 applications, but the activity and development on the CENNZ network has been eclipsed by a “recent fork of some of the CENNZnet blockchain’s open-source code to create a separate and unique blockchain network”, The Root Network, which is Centrality’s metaverse blockchain for their interoperable metaverse called FutureVerse. At launch, The Root Network tokenomics reveals that 10% of $ROOT is allocated for the exchange of $CENNZ to $ROOT at a 1:1 ratio. MEXC listed $ROOT on December 12th, 2023.
The Root Network is a Layer-1 blockchain with XRPL integration. Users can bridge assets between XRPL and ROOT. The Root Network uses $XRP as the default gas and block rewards token. FutureVerse has multiple NFT collections on Ethereum, and they will be able to be bridged to the Root Network, which utilizes the XLS-20 NFT standard.
FutureVerse NFT Collections can be found on OpenSea and other major NFT marketplaces. The collections on Ethereum are:
- FLUF World (OG Bunny avatar)
- FLUF World: Burrows (land)
- FLUF World: Thingies (AI-integrated spider artists)
- FLUF World: Scenes & Sounds (can customize your dynamic NFTs)
- FLUF World: Buzzies (honey-harvesting bee companions)
- FLUF World: EGGS (for breeding future Fluflets)
- FLUF World: Art by Thingies (AI-generated art)
- PartyBear (customizable avatar)
- The Seekers (SYLO decentralized communication robots)
- ASM Brains (unique AI, owned via NFT)
- ASM Gen II Brains (second gen. Non-Fungible Intelligence)
- ASM AIFA All-Stars (AI-powered football characters)
- Muhammad Ali — The Next Legends — Boxers (AI-powered boxers)
The other FutureVerse fungible tokens are:
- $SYLO (decentralized communication and data exchange network)
- $ASTO (decentralized protocol for Non-Fungible Intelligence)
JASMY
Finally, we arrive at JASMY, the other Consortium that paid Centrality the license to use the PLUGnet toolkit on Hyperledger Fabric, an open-source, gas-free, modular enterprise framework developed by the Hyperledger Foundation, which has a diverse group of founding members, including IBM, Intel, & J.P. Morgan. Fabric is one of Hyperledger’s oldest graduated projects with over 15,000 contributing engineers. Consortium Members run a Peer Node (which is an administrator/validator). Although the network is private, more Peer Nodes further decentralize the network. Fabric is compatible with Solidity and can be interoperable with other Hyperledger Distributed Ledgers and Corda, through Hyperledger Cacti.
JASMY stands for Japan-Ando-Sato-Masanobu Yoshida. These are former SONY Executives, with Kunitake Ando being a former President of SONY, standing shoulder to shoulder with Steve Jobs on many occasions.
JASMY is a private human oracle IoT network that features an AI-powered Personal Data Market that will connect all JASMY-capable devices together. Their mission is “to return personal data to the hands of the individual it belongs to, and to realize ‘democratization of data’ that is distributed and managed in a secure way.”
JASMY Inc. is a licensing company that has created the world’s first blockchain computer (JASMY Secure PC on Microsoft Windows) and companies like VAIO & AVITA are the first to manufacture devices and white-label the product as their own. JASMY also has mobile devices in development and have been issued multiple international patents, protecting their IP:
- JP,2022–120111,A (click publication number)
- My breakdown of JP,2022–120111,A on JASMY Reddit
- JP,2022–065915,A (click publication number)
- My breakdown of JP,2022–065915,A on JASMY Reddit
- JP,2023–126889,A (click publication number)
- My breakdown of JP,2023–126889,A on JASMY Reddit
A quick google search reveals that IBM and Microsoft share the vision of Data Democracy.
JASMY provides two core services: Secure Knowledge Communicator and Smart Guardian.
The Secure Knowledge Communicator handles “the registration function (Know Your Customer: KYC) that allows you to easily start using the blockchain provided by JASMY Inc., distributes the management and accumulation of your data securely on your smartphone and in the blockchain, and provides a function that allows users to freely trade their own data and trace it.”
The Smart Guardian provides a function in which “IoT devices can be easily and securely registered in the original blockchain network, and at the same time, an environment that can only be accessed by the owning user is realized.” Essentially, the network will recognize your registered devices, which they call Know Your Machine: KYM.
$JASMY ERC20 is the network’s main asset and they are building their public layer-2 chain on Optimism to connect to the JASMY Main Private Network through their partnership with Kana Labs.
Their recent partnership with Bifrost ($BFC) will bring Multichain to their JASMY NFTs, which connect to a Personal Data Locker (a private channel on Hyperledger Fabric).
JASMY’s ecosystem is planned to be centered around the token, by requiring businesses to stake $JASMY to be able to build on the network and trade data. Users who stake a small amount of $JASMY in their Personal Data Locker, will have the option to send their yen-pegged stablecoins, DDcoin (for Data Democracy) to the public chain.
The multiple chains connected to JASMY make this ecosystem a hybrid solution, bringing a private chain, public chain, and interoperability chain together.
JASMY is working on a number of issues with the Japanese Government through their confirmed partnerships, like voluntary carbon credits with the National Carbon Credit Consortium (NCCC), a secure version of Japan’s Social Security Number, called MyNumber, with CyberTrust’s iTrust, and stablecoin IoT infrastructure in Japan with their partner Aplix.
The company is also a sponsor of the J1 football team Sagan Tosu, which is the first sports team to develop JASMY Fan Tokens. The team recently announced it is releasing their own mobile device: “The Sagan Tosu smartphone is a custom model of “Smart WiFi” provided by X-Mobile.”
A couple fun facts about Jasmy Inc.
- They own the IP for the Sagan Tosu mascot, a magpie.
- One of their listed inventors is Manabu Sakamoto, the person who designed the PlayStation logo.
Binance placed JASMY in the “Innovation Zone” (since renamed “Monitoring tags”) in May 2023, which happened months after they announced their Greenfield Data Storage and Market; in all fairness, Jasmy Inc.’s developments have been focused on their private network and they still have to release their public chain, so the Binance team has not been able to view public code updates on GitHub.
Upcoming launches for JASMY include their public Jasmy Chain on Optimism and the JASMY AI-powered Data Market; scheduled to launch at the end of Japan’s 4th Quarter, which is around April 2024.
Conclusion
The PLUGnet Toolkit has evolved into multiple blockchains, under two separate consortiums. At the time of this writing, they are still considered underdogs in their respective categories. Both the FutureVerse Consortium and JASMY Consortium are constantly overlooked by the majority of the crypto community, who have favored more popular metaverse and IoT digital assets.
I think 2024 could be a strong turning point for these consortium blockchains, with their product launches and potential partnership announcements, like FutureVerse’s recent announcement of its partnership with ReadyPlayerOne IP and formed ReadyVerse Studios with the newly formed studio partnering with Warner Brothers Discovery!
This has been an introduction and there is much more to write about when it comes to the Root Network, FutureVerse, JASMY, and the Ottó Blockchain. I look forward to sharing more research regarding these consortiums and other distributed ledger technologies.
Rilynn Rouse
