Important update on DPub and our direction 

Over the past few weeks, we have been doing a deep dive on the Hedera NFT market in preparation for our secondary launch. We built DPub last year as a primary launchpad for creators.

Thread 👇 

Dpub was built with creators in mind, but we quickly realized that there was a lack of places for buyers to resell the NFTs purchased on DPub. We started to quickly build a secondary marketplace called “The Q”. The landmark of the Q has been decentralized auctions. 

Before we launch the Q and the gating token “VODB” we decided to look at the market to make sure there was an actual market for an additional secondary marketplace. 

Today, there are multiple marketplaces and platforms out there including HashAxis, Zuse, Hashguild, and GoMint as well as minting platforms like TMT and Hashdudes, etc. 

We have concluded that by launching “The Q”, our short-term path is limited to taking away market share away from the existing platforms. The reality is the Hedera ecosystem is still growing and need more volume to sustain multiple platforms. 

Therefore, we have made the decision to delay the public launch of VODB and the Q until a larger market is established. 

We will be focusing instead on the following items: 
- Continued build-out of DPub 
- Event type auctions on the Q 
- Utilizing VODB tech for generative art 

For DPub current members, we will continue to build out the capabilities that you love 
- Minting (different serial) 
- Story telling - Different selling experiences 
- Token Gated content 

We will continue to do auctions (like this weekend 4/23 and 4/24)

We will have team members that will run regular auctions on the Q, but auction capabilities will not be rolled out to the public as planned.

While we have put a lot of work and personal money into the Q and VODB, we have not sold anything yet. 

We prefer to wait versus sell a token or charge for a service that can’t be supported because of a lack of volume.

In addition, we are evaluating the price point for DPub access (Creator Token) with our team. 

There is quite a bit more we want to build on DPub, and will put our attention on continuing to build the creator and buyer experience. 

Do we have a new launch date for VODB and the Q? No - we are putting it on hold without setting a new date. We will continue to work with other projects, as we have built a pretty amazing team with @HbarSuper_Chief @young_jet_entpz @Justynjj @brainzish  . 

The Q and VODB have great tech behind them, so if other projects are interested in utilizing this tech, please reach out.

Questions - come joined our Discord.  dpub.xyz/discord

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/DPubXYZ/Do1ufR7

DPub Update 4-19-22

eCommerce, Web2, and Web3 have a need for auctions that are not controlled by a single entity with identity, security, and fairness built into the algorithm. 

The case for decentralized auction on @hedera

A thread 🧵👇

There have been many centralized digital auction platforms over the last 20 years.  Centralized auctions have a couple of core issues including:
- Identity and auction completion / payment
- Fair ordering of bids
- Internal fraud (admins changing information)
- Security 

Centralized auctions have a database that stores all bid information and orders transactions based on timestamp algorithms. Databases are centralized ledgers that inherently are controlled by the party that owns the database. 

These centralized ledgers become middlemen between buyer and seller, and the ledgers they control become valuable analytic data sources.

Distributed ledgers (or DLT) solves most of the problems of centralized auctions.

By building an auction using a DLT:
- Decentralization
- Proven security
- Fair ordering
- Full transparency

In other words, you are no longer depending on a centralized database to store and record bids. A decentralized auction creates, orders, and stores bids on the Distributed Ledger.

Bids can be created from one platform or many. Platforms become reflections of the DLT.

Decentralized auctions have many high-value use cases including real-estate, commodity markets, material lots, industrial assets, among others.

However, most L1 and L2 platforms are susceptible to high gas prices and/or security issues - let alone the environmental impact and energy use of small countries.

Additionally, most platforms can't handle the transactions per seconds or finality requirements.

@Hedera is a unique platform that can handle the specialized use cases of decentralized auctions.

@hedera's unique properties include
- Enterprise-grade public network
- High transaction throughput-10k/sec
- Finality in 3-5 sec
- Smart Contracts
- ABFT security
- Carbon negative

Hedera has 2 primary services that can be used to create the auction
- HCS - Hedera Consensus Service (bids and ordering)
- HTS - Hedera Token Service (DeFi and ownership)

HCS manages bids (or votes), HTS manages the financial and ownership transfer of the asset.

The Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) acts as a trust layer for any application or permissioned network and allows for the creation of an immutable and verifiable log of messages.

In a decentralized auction, messages represent the bid metadata.

A UI can be created that is permissioned to submit messages or bids to a specific HCS topic (auction). The auction describes the HTS token and ownership being bid (DeFi), and the terms and conditions. The message describe the bid (&metadata) in addition to using a Smart Contract.

UIs don't store bids - they reflect what exists on the trusted HCS layer. Anyone can look up a topic and bid and read the metadata (depending on how that information is encoded).

Trust and transparency through decentralization.

This is what we have done with "The Q". While, of course, the first use case is Art NFTs, the technology is applicable to all types of auction use cases. This is just a POC of something bigger and better on the horizon.

The Q controls nothing - only enables a buyer to place a bid on the @Hedera Consensus Service.  We reflect on what exists and is verifiable on HCS.

We believe that we will be able to expand the Q to enable multiple platforms to bid at the same time.

Discover an NFT on Zuse, bid on Zuse, but the Q and HashGuild can place bids too. All decentralized - none of us control it. 

Decentralized auction - trust, transparency, fairness, and security. 

Great for a trusted NFT marketplace of course, but when you start looking to other assets - especially commercial and industrial assets - that is when it gets really exciting.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/DPubXYZ/7ABGRhF

Pricing, floors, and ceilings are a nightmare right now in Hedera.

I wanted to take a few minutes to explain a few intentional decisions we are making in our secondary marketplace and DPub regarding pricing and analytics.

👇🧵👇

The underlying technology of Hedera can be complicated, but it is important that we understand how things are structured for the future of our network.

Creators should be looking to make passive income when their NFTs rise in value and are sold with a royalty.

To make buying and pricing decisions, buyers and sellers need a transactional history of an NFT. This will help increase value. 

In Hedera, an NFT transfer has two components:

1. The NFT and Serial number to be transferred

2. The Crypto (hbar or another token) transferred

When a transfer is done using the above two components, Hedera records the transaction on the NFT itself. NFT transactions include MINT, escrow transfers, and purchases including the royalties given to the original creators.

This provides pricing and analytical transparency.

If you want to see an example of this, you can look at a recent auction transfer on DPub:
https://mainnet-public.mirrornode.hedera.com/api/v1/tokens/0.0.760898/nfts/1/transactions

3 transactions - MINT, transfer to Escrow, and the actual purchase. To see the details of the transaction, you can check out this link: 
https://mainnet-public.mirrornode.hedera.com/api/v1/transactions/0.0.636139-1647043347-672288852

While that might be a bit cryptic - the transaction details show a royalty payment (10%-50 hbar) and payment of 449 hbar. 

The point is - anyone can look at an NFT, and see how much it has sold for - when and to whom.

NFT transactions enable easy calculation of floors & ceiling

For example - when you use SecureTrade from @HashPackApp, it properly records the NFT transaction.

When an NFT is transferred without using this method, no transaction value is recorded. On Hedera, it shows that the NFT was transferred for 0 hbar. 

When you have a buyer just send HBAR to an account, then do a blind transfer - no value transaction is recorded (only the transfer).

Sure, it costs a few hbar to do it through SecureTrade or DPub, but keeping the NFT transaction is worth it. For all of us.

If the NFT transaction is not recorded properly, Hedera will show NFTs with purchases at 0 hbar and we will be forced to use centralized pricing engines that match transactions instead of using the native Hedera NFT capabilities.

However-using this method has been a much more difficult path to choose and has taken more time and has been expensive.

But, it is better for the community and will help draw in creators from other networks.

We worked hard with our partner at @HashPackApp to build this capability, and it works very, very well.

We are implementing the same in our Secondary Marketspace called "The Q" where we are building decentralized auctions, pricing, and selling.

The beauty of this method is that buyers and sellers will not have to depend on us (or any other centralized entity) for pricing analytics. Anyone can build pricing analytics using native Hedera capabilities and MirrorNodes.

Decentralized is the goal...

Who is with me?

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/DPubXYZ/JeV8kYm