This article is a brief overview of the TAIKAI Whitepaper, a document that introduces the TAIKAI Garden, a new paradigm to foster innovation and decentralized project development that stems from TAIKAI’s experience as a hackathon hosting platform.
In the following sections, we will summarize the key aspects of this whitepaper, however, for a more comprehensive understanding, we encourage you to read the full whitepaper, which can be found at Garden Whitepaper.
TAIKAI Garden: planting the first seed?
There are many types of initiatives dedicated to supporting early-stage projects, with their primary common goal being to provide access to funding and valuable networking opportunities. However, few effectively focus on community contribution as a pathway to innovation. This is why the TAIKAI Garden stands out as an initiative that aims to support innovators within an incentivized network.
The TAKAI Garden Ecosystem
TAIKAI Garden’s sustainability is modeled with a Token Engineering systems approach where the native utility token $TKAI is used as work token. Inside the ecosystem, agents can assume several roles at the same time, distinguished between:
- Project Owners: entrepreneurial individuals that have initiated a project within the ecosystem and are responsible for developing it.
- Mentors: knowledgeable peers who share insights with the community through an on-demand manner.
- Farmers: active community members who are incentivized to both vote on the most promising projects and validate/invalidate updates or other assessments.
The ecosystem has 2 main tools: the Mentors Sandbox, and the Projects Sandbox, which we’ll cover now.
Mentors Sandbox 🧑🏫
The Mentors Sandbox showcases all professionals in the ecosystem that provide insights, knowledge, and help to projects. Anyone can apply to become a mentor after filling an application form and connecting their wallet, and owning the Mentorship Role, which is obtained by staking a minimum number of TKAI into the platform.
Projects Sandbox 🏗️
The Project Sandbox is where all the magic happens. This sandbox is dedicated to showcasing projects within the ecosystem and serves as a platform for aspiring entrepreneurs to develop their ideas into fully-fledged projects with the support of a community. While participation in the TAIKAI Garden by a project is intended to fulfill innovators’ needs, participation is not expected to be permanent. This means that projects are expected to transition out of the ecosystem once their needs are satisfied, making room for new projects.
There are two possible entry methods to the Project Sandbox:
1- After participating in a hackathon, users can “add a project to Garden” to automatically fork/clone it into TAIKAI Garden for further development.
2- Alternatively, users can create a project from scratch directly within TAIKAI Garden.
Creating projects in the Project Sandbox incurs no cost, regardless of the chosen path because its main purpose is to encourage innovation and the creation of new projects.
TAIKAI Garden’s Project Lifecycle
After accessing the Projects Sandbox, every project goes through a project lifecycle divided into different stages.
Phase 1- Seed Project
By default, every project that joins the “Garden” is initially set as Seed. This allows the community and the Project owner to perform most of the possible interactions with the project and opens the project to community following and participation.
Phase 2- Entry Into Innovation Farming
To qualify for the Innovation Farming, which we’ll explain more in detail later in the article, project owners or members of Seed projects must mint a Project NFT and set up a project wallet.
The Project NFT will serve as a non-fungible digital certificate that signifies ownership of a project within the platform, designating the wallet as the project’s primary main authority to manage editing rights, updates, and entitlement to potential rewards.
Phase 3- Sprout Project
By minting the Project NFT, the project is eligible for the Innovation Farming stage and moves from Seed to Sprout. Now, project owners or members can perform the same interactions as a Seed, while also promoting project development in TAIKAI Garden and receiving community donations.
While projects are not yet eligible for network rewards, they can work towards qualification for the Innovation Farming program.
4- Farming Project
When a project evolves from Sprout to Farming project, the project enters the Innovation Farming and becomes eligible for farmer voting via veTKAI votes, farmer assessment project updates, and project rewards.
The Innovation Farming will feature sprints where selected projects will be voted by the community to reward the best projects.
5- Graduate Project
After completing the participation in the Innovation Farming, the project will transition into Graduate, the final stage of the project within the ecosystem. In this phase, community members can follow and interact with the project updates posted by the project members and also donate to the project.
Graduate projects are expected to transition out of the ecosystem once their needs are satisfied, making room for new projects.
Innovation Farming 🌱
Innovation Farming consists of sprints, during which Farming projects develop and participants engage with them for rewards. Sprints are continuous, which means that one starts after the previous finishes, and have a duration of 2 weeks.
During a sprint, Farm projects are ranked based on a scoring function and rewards are distributed to both projects and voters according to the rank achieved. At the start of a new sprint, the project score functions and voting allocation is reset, and each participant’s voting power increases.
How to qualify for Innovation Farming?
In concurrency with the Innovation Farming rank system, a second rank system will simultaneously take place to qualify Seed projects for the next Innovation Farming batch. At the end of each sprint, a new batch containing the top 5 ranked projects transitions to Farming projects. Consequently, previous Farming projects in the same batch transition into Graduate projects, ceasing their participation in Innovation Farming. The system is designed to periodically refresh the projects inside the program.
TKAI Token Model
TKAI is TAIKAI’s native ERC-20 utility token which will be used as a medium of exchange within the TAIKAI ecosystem. TKAI’s will be used in a multitude of purposes within the TAIKAI ecosystem that include:
- Medium of exchange: TKAI will serve as payment for accessing gated services such as minting the project NFT, featuring a project on TAIKAI’s main platform, or featuring a project update on TAIKAI Garden. These payments are deducted from the user’s balances and contribute to the TAIKAI treasury as network revenue.
- Feeless peer-to-peer interactions: Users will have the freedom to engage in peer-to-peer transactions such as mentorship and donations without any fees charged.
- Staking: TKAI can be staked to access several rights while at the same time incentivizing long-term holding and commitment to the platform’s goals. TKAI can be unstaked at any moment in time.
- Access to voting power: Upon staking TKAI, a wallet becomes eligible to receive veTKAI votes, which provide both voting and validation powers. The token is neither transferable nor tradable since they are locked in the private wallet of the user.
TKAI’s total supply of 300M preminted tokens will be initially allocated to the treasury and will be fully distributed over the course of 120 months to the ecosystem, according to the following allocation:
- Hackathon rewards — 20%: Rewards allocation towards TAIKAI hackathon participants from previous and future editions, including hackers, juries, and mentors, in an approximately linear vesting schedule.
- Innovation Farming — 40%: Rewards towards highly rated projects and their respective farmers in TAIKAI Garden in each batch.
- Team, Equity Partners and Advisors — 25%: Allocation towards LayerX team and its equity partners & advisors, responsible for planning the strategy and execution for the TAIKAI Garden development.
- Hacker External Communities — 10%: Allocation towards Web3 communities that are devoted to goals that approximate those of TAIKAI.
- Liquidity Provision — 5%: Allocation towards enlisting the token on tradeable markets.
TAIKAI Garden Whitepaper
TAIKAI Garden is a product extension of TAIKAI that redefines the innovation landscape’s status quo by connecting innovators to an inclusive and collaborative environment. Designed on an incentive framework, the ecosystem answers the need for sustained and democratized access to support aspiring innovators turn their ideas into impactful businesses.
We invite you to explore the full version of the Whitepaper where you can find in-depth information about the ecosystem goals, dynamics, and the benefits your project can reap by joining the TAIKAI Garden.
