Settlement systems play a crucial role in the financial and e-commerce industries, serving as the foundation for efficient, reliable, and secure market structures. Without these systems, these markets would resemble the unpredictable and chaotic nature of the Wild West. However, with the creation of distributed ledger technology (DLT), it is becoming possible to achieve settlement of payments without relying on a trusted third party as an intermediary. Thus paving the way for a "trustless" system.
Boson Protocol specifically addresses the challenges of refunds, expiry, and complaints in a way that maximizes the quality of redemption transactions through an incentive-compatible and implementable mechanism. By utilizing smart contracts, Boson ensures that the payment and exchange of items and services occur simultaneously or not at all. The protocol aims to eliminate the need for intermediaries in the e-commerce space, simplifying and reducing the costs associated with the process
To facilitate its objectives, the protocol introduces a commercial interface utilizing tokenized futures contracts known as ‘stateful NFTs’. These contracts serve as valid confirmations for the future buying and selling of goods or services at specific dates. The tokens in the protocol execute a game-theory-based approach, rewarding both sides of a transaction for meeting their respective objectives. Sellers and buyers are required to escrow a deposit, which is forfeited to the counterparty if they fail to fulfil their promise to complete the exchange.
In addition to its e-commerce operations, the Boson Protocol also seeks to revolutionize the way user and customer data are utilized and monetized. They are trying to offer a global Web3 commerce data marketplace, serving as a platform for trading user data. Users can voluntarily share their data in exchange for equitable rewards, ensuring a fair and transparent approach to data monetization.
The idea behind Boson Protocol is indeed innovative and has the potential to be a game-changer, they are indeed trying to tackle the right sort of problem that could be streamlined in the world through adoption of new blockchain new technology. However in my opinion so far all Boson have seemed to achieve is create an escrow service on the blockchain. Their ecosystem is still far from the decentralised one they have set out to achieve and currently I would say it is simpler and cheaper to use a centralised service that offers escrow at this present moment in time so I don’t believe it will catch on in its current form unless they can take their ‘almost trustless’ ecosystem and make it more streamlined, automated and fully trustless. Show Less
