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GIANT Protocol Litepaper
GIANT Protocol Litepaper

Version 0.1 by the GIANT Protocol Team

Version 0.1 by the GIANT Protocol Team

Introduction

The GIANT Foundation* aims to empower the world to build a more open and inclusive internet. It created the GIANT Protocol to decentralize and democratize access to connectivity and financial services for all. It’s a new web3 telecommunications layer that coordinates, tokenizes, and financializes ownership of the entire telecom ecosystem.

At its core, GIANT is a native blockchain that acts as a Decentralized Internet Access Layer (“DIAL”) that aggregates existing corporate and community-owned network assets via a set of protocols that turn bandwidth into a global, digital asset, thus enabling the formation of a decentralized connectivity economy, accessible to anyone, owned by everyone.

Problem

The traditional model for provisioning connectivity and financial services that rely on closed, centralized, for-profit entities has created several systemic issues, such as:

Connectivity providers have no incentive to collaborate with each other to provide open, ubiquitous, and affordable global internet access. The existing approach has resulted in a radically over-provisioned, yet inefficiently distributed set of overlapping networks which are closed, gated by different competing providers and their paywalls, making the user experience cumbersome, fragmented, and inaccessible for many. This is in part because there is no simple way to authenticate end users or devices, and no inherent benefit to change the user experience.

Connectivity providers also have no easy way to offer financial services. Their attempts to offer financial services to their subscribers, including the financially underserved, to make financial services accessible to all, have largely remained unsuccessful. This is due to the lack of cooperation from the local and regional financial institutions, who act as rent-seeking intermediaries that take the end user funds as deposits, lend them out and generate high-yield, yet offer negligible yield in exchange to the end users. These parties also prioritize wealthier users, charge high banking fees, high interest rates, high domestic and international transfer costs, contributing to lack of financial inclusion, and increasing the economic divide. This is mainly because the financial institutions have competing interests with connectivity providers and no motivation to collaborate with them to provide more open, inclusive, and accessible financial services to all.

Decentralized protocols promise more open, inclusive, affordable, and attractive connectivity and financial services, yet remain largely inaccessible. They’re hard to access, not easy to use, and require understanding of new digital currencies without utility in the real world. There are more than 5.18B mobile phone users that spend more than $2 trillion to access broadband and mobile internet every year, yet only about 220M crypto users in the world.

These systemic issues have made decentralizing and democratizing access to the internet and financial services a challenge.

Solution

Access to connectivity and financial services is a basic human right.

Consumers spend trillions of dollars on connectivity contracts annually. By creating a system of incentives that benefit both consumers and providers, the underutilized value in connectivity contracts can be unlocked. This means turning bandwidth and the money consumers already spend on connectivity into a global, community-owned resource.

By turning the money already spent on mobile data contracts into tokens and financializing those tokens in crypto markets, the GIANT Protocol makes it easy and intuitive for real world users to use, earn, and own crypto, simply by going online. Through decentralized governance and incentive mechanisms, the protocol self-organizes and coordinates between disparate participants in market-driven ways. Its open and transparent protocols enable resources to be shared more efficiently and more equitably distribute the benefits of tokenized ownership to all. It enables better data connectivity for everyone and universal, nondiscriminatory banking access for everyone. Thus, creating a multi-trillion dollar, connectivity economy, that is owned and governed by its users.

A Decentralized Connectivity Economy

The conventional model for forming a global connectivity economy requires multiple competing providers, banks, as well as governments with conflicting interests to co-operate, making it practically infeasible to exist. Thanks to protocol-based decentralized networks, distributed ledgers, cryptographic currencies, the economics of provisioning public utilities is fundamentally shifting. A new class of global economies that are decentralized and protocol-based is emerging.

This paper proposes aligning incentives of existing providers as well as new providers and forming a Decentralized Connectivity Economy that is open to all, seamless, and secure by design, and governed by the community. This means creating a set of trustless protocols that enable anyone to offer connectivity and financial services, as well as anyone to get access to the internet and financial services in a simple, seamless, and consistent manner globally without being locked to a single provider.

It consists of a native blockchain functionally acting as a Decentralized Internet Access Layer (“DIAL”) that unifies existing networks as well as community-owned networks, a teller protocol to tokenize data contracts, a connectivity protocol to access internet on-demand (without a sim), a yield protocol to offer yield on unused data balance, a verifiable proof called Proof of Connection to verify the connection was established as desired, semi-fungible cryptographic tokens called Data Contract Token (DCT) that represents connectivity contracts, native tokens called GIANT tokens to incentivize all the stakeholders, and a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to manage, fund, maintain, and expand the network. Finally, the foundation expects to work with third party commercial entities to implement the protocols, manage the user experience and provide an open source reference implementation for all participants.

Stakeholders

The main participants include:

Providers represent any individual or organization that provides access to the internet. This includes connectivity service providers, hotspot aggregators, inflight WiFi providers, fixed broadband providers, and the decentralized internet providers like Helium, Althea Mesh, etc. They earn GIANT tokens for offering bandwidth contracts.

Consumers represent any individual or organization that accesses the internet (developer applications, IoT devices, etc.). They spend GIANT tokens to access the internet and earn GIANT tokens for usage as well as on their unused data balance.

Validators represent any individual or organization that runs a node for the GIANT Protocol. Validators collectively provide decentralized consensus and add blocks to GIANT Protocol’s decentralized ledger in exchange for native token block rewards.

Community represents any individual or organization that is a native token holder. Native token holders can approve improvements to the protocol, decide allocation of the treasury, vote for members of the council, nominate validators and stake their tokens as collateral.

Objectives

The protocol is designed to fulfill the following key objectives:

Accessible: The purpose of this project is to allow users to access instant, SIMless, global internet seamlessly. The protocol enables consumers to stay connected without needing to switch SIM cards, ask for WiFi passwords, carry bulky hotspot devices or pay outrageous roaming fees. It abstracts the complexity of discovering the best providers to connect to and automatically establishes connections to local networks. It also eliminates the need to have accounts with different providers for home, mobile, inflight, and international roaming data.

Secure: The protocol provides security through decentralized consensus and a verifiable proof of connection, and disincentivizing rogue networks. This architecture is secured by cryptographic tokens on a public ledger. In addition, privacy for consumers and providers is achieved by anonymizing all public data stored in the blockchain.

Fast: Providers are required to collateralize GIANT tokens to mint data contracts and deploy certified and approved protocol implementations. This system of incentives and oversight reward the providers with the fastest, most reliable service.

Incentivized: The protocol incentivizes both the providers and the consumers of bandwidth. All providers are eligible to earn GIANT tokens for offering data contracts and delivering fast, reliable service against those contracts. All providers maintain control of the services they offer — pricing, packaging, period, rollover, transferability, etc. Consumers in turn earn GIANT tokens when they buy data contracts and consume bandwidth against those data contracts.

Trustless: The protocol is constructed as a public protocol where anyone can freely join. All components of the protocol are identified by their public key hash (which defines a blockchain account user ID). An immutable list of transactions is maintained and recorded on a public blockchain for anyone to audit. In addition, all providers submit publicly auditable proofs of the service they provided to users. They generate proofs of connection and record them on a distributed storage platform to allow anyone to cryptographically verify that the provider offered service according to the terms of the data contract. For more information refer to the Connectivity Protocol section.

System Components

The GIANT Protocol consists of discrete layers of components creating a scalable, performant, upgradeable, and composable platform with clear separation of concerns and well defined interfaces.

There are four primary layers of abstraction that aggregate the core connectivity infrastructure:

Native Blockchain: The GIANT Protocol is structured as a native layer 1 blockchain that aggregates existing networks as well as community-owned networks to form a Decentralized Internet Access Layer (DIAL) and provides high throughput, low costs, secure transactions, and incentivized rewards for maintaining the public ledger that underpins the connectivity economy.

Smart Contract Protocols: The GIANT Protocol’s Teller, Connectivity, and Yield Protocols are a set of permissionless, trustless smart contracts that coordinate, tokenize, and financialize bandwidth.

Tools and SDKs: The GIANT Protocol offers open source tools and SDKs, for example a wallet, a fiat on/off ramp, and blockchain explorer - that provide scalability and value-added services on top of the smart contract protocols.

Reference Decentralized Applications (dApps): The GIANT Protocol offers reference implementations of decentralized applications through which GIANT Protocol’s stakeholders can engage and interact with the protocol’s and services. Different stakeholders will be able to develop additional dApps. Examples include a global mobile connectivity app, an app where providers can publish data contracts, etc.

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Fig. 1 System Components

Native Blockchain

GIANT Protocol’s blockchain is a Substrate-based layer-1 blockchain purpose-built to power a Decentralized Internet Access Layer that aggregates existing networks and community-owned networks. The native blockchain is designed with built-in incentive mechanisms and is governed by a decentralized autonomous organization, effectively coordinating between data providers, consumers, and validators to enable global connectivity services with superior reliability and performance. A Substrate-based chain with short block production time, deterministic finality, forkless upgrades, and a web-based wallet, the protocol’s native chain leverages Nominated Proof of Stake consensus (NPoS) and a trustless Proof of Connection (PoC) to power its smart contract protocols.

An important component of GIANT Protocol’s governance is the mechanism by which the community reaches consensus on additions to the distributed ledger. Through NPoS, any native token holder may participate in the health and maintenance of GIANT Protocol by nominating a Validator node and earning Validator block rewards in return. Since GIANT Protocol rewards providers and consumers with GIANT tokens for offering and consuming bandwidth, those who contribute to this shared global connectivity resource become the ones best positioned to control the protocol’s network of Validators.

Any GIANT Protocol wallet with a minimum number of GIANT tokens staked can become a Validator. The minimum number of GIANT tokens required is dynamic, based on an auction mechanism as the total number of GIANT Protocol Validator slots will be limited and fixed. Despite the apparent limitation of a fixed number of Validators, anybody can become a GIANT Protocol nominator by staking their GIANT tokens on behalf of a Validator, effectively becoming an indirect Validator. In the future, through governance voting, the validator slots can be increased if the initial size ends up being suboptimal.

Smart Contract Protocols

At the heart of GIANT Protocol are three smart contract protocols - Teller Protocol, Connectivity Protocol, and Yield Protocol. The Teller Protocol tokenizes bandwidth into a semi-fungible cryptographic token on the blockchain. The Connectivity Protocol enables anyone to access the internet using tokenized bandwidth contracts. The Yield Protocol enables anyone to access financial services using tokenized bandwidth. These protocols are described in greater detail in the Protocols section below.

Tools & SDKs

The Tools & SDKs provide APIs, SDKs, and tools that enable developers to build connectivity and financial services of the future using smart contract protocols. In addition to scalable APIs that encapsulate the protocols mentioned above, there are also tools for bridging from third party ecosystems and platforms into GIANT Protocol’s connectivity economy, for example bridging from fiat to GIANT Protocol’s native currency or bridging a telco customer identity to a GIANT protocol wallet using their phone number.

dApps

dApps are applications built on top of the protocol to enable non-developers to access GIANT Protocol’s services. These dApps provide GIANT Protocol’s stakeholders with an intuitive interface to tokenize bandwidth and access internet and financial services without needing to write any code. Data providers can tokenize their bandwidth. Consumers can purchase tokenized bandwidth and access internet and financial services. Community members can vote on improvement proposals and vote for members of the leadership council. The foundation plans to release their own reference dApps for example, a global mobile connectivity app, a global mobile banking app, and an app where providers can publish data contracts. Mobile network operators and other connectivity providers can also deliver these same features through their own apps built using GIANT Protocol’s tools and SDKs. For more information about GIANT Protocol’s reference dApp, see the section Reference dApp below

Tokens

The GIANT Protocol revolves around two cryptographic tokens - Data Contract Tokens (DCTs) and GIANT tokens - described in more detail below.

Data Contract Tokens

Data Contract Tokens are novel semi-fungible cryptographic tokens that represent contracts for data, for example 15GB of 5G/LTE data in the United States from June 1, 2022 through June 30, 2022 for $25USD or unlimited WiFi data through a premium hotspot network valid for 7 days from activation for $20USD. Data Providers may mint DCTs for each of their data offers and sell those DCTs to Data Consumers. Data Consumers may then redeem those DCTs to access the internet and financial services.

Each Data Provider that joins GIANT Protocol maintains control of the services they offer - pricing, packaging, period, rollover, transferability, and all other terms of the contract. While this means that each DCT is specific to each Data Provider, it also means existing Data Providers don’t need to change their offers. Any data offer can be tokenized with GIANT Protocol through a Data Contract Token.

From a Consumer’s perspective, the tokenization of their data contracts is transparent. When consumers buy DCTs, they’re purchasing data plans just as they do today, and the DCTs that represent those data plans allow them to seamlessly access the internet. Regardless of connection type - mobile, fixed, inflight, premium hotspot data - the DCT enables zero-touch access to the internet. Each Data Contract Token contains within it all the information required for the consumer to discover and access the Data Provider’s internet service. Data Contract Tokens take advantage of the revolutionary capabilities of eSim to enable mobile devices to discover and access mobile internet services without the need for a physical SIM card. For more about how consumers access the internet using DCTs, see Connectivity Protocol below.

By tokenizing data contracts as DCTs, Data Providers and Data Consumers enjoy new opportunities to offer and access financial services: earn yield on unused data, earn rewards for going online, pay bills with unused data, secure credit against long-term contracts, etc. By turning existing data contracts into tradable and transferable assets on the blockchain, the GIANT Protocol opens up new opportunities for offering and accessing the internet and financial services like never before.

GIANT Tokens

GIANT tokens are the protocol’s native tokens. It is the currency with which data providers tokenize their bandwidth, data consumers buy bandwidth tokens, and the DAO rewards the stakeholders. GIANT tokens represent the aggregate value of GIANT Protocol’s connectivity economy and bestows upon its token holders the right to participate in GIANT Protocol’s governance and operations.

GIANT token supply is fixed at 1 billion tokens, 650 million of which will be premined. They are designed to be deflationary. In order to cultivate the healthy growth of GIANT Protocol, the total supply is allocated to incentivize key stakeholders or behaviors as follows:

Allocation

Quantity

Premined

Description

Validators

350,000,000

To reward Validators for validating blocks

Team

250,000,000

Yes

To attract and retain a world class team

Investors

200,000,000

Yes

To fund early stage growth

Treasury

100,000,000

Yes

To reserve for the unexpected

Demand

50,000,000

Yes

To incentivize consumption of bandwidth

Supply

50,000,000

Yes

To incentivize supply of bandwidth

Total

1,000,000,000

N/A

To represent the aggregate value of the protocol

There are no rows in this table

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Table 1 GIANT Token Supply

In the future GIANT Protocol may decide to increase the GIANT token supply to continue to incentivize Validators with block rewards or reallocate GIANT tokens.

Protocols

This section describes the three trustless protocols at the core of GIANT Protocol’s design:

Teller Protocol: Data Providers mint Data Contract Tokens that represent contracts for data using the Teller Protocol.

Connectivity Protocol: Data Consumers access the internet with DCTs through the Connectivity Protocol.

Yield Protocol: Data Consumers and Data Providers generate yield on their unused data through the Yield Protocol.

These three smart contract protocols are described in more detail below.

Teller Protocol - Minting Data Contract Tokens

The Teller Protocol enables anyone to turn bandwidth capacity into cryptographic tokens tradable on the blockchain and start earning. These trustless, automated, and permissionless smart contracts are designed to incentivize high quality of service at great value for consumers.

The protocol incentivizes high quality of service by slashing GIANT tokens collateral the Data Providers put up against the Data Contract Tokens they mint in case of poor quality of service. The flow of the Teller Protocol through which any Data Provider can mint a Data Contract Token is described further below.

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Fig. 2 Teller Protocol Diagram

Mint Request: The Data Provider sends a request to mint a DCT to the DCT Minting smart contract with the notional retail price of the DCT to be minted.

Collateral Value Request: The DCT Minting smart contract forwards the notional retail price and the unique Data Provider ID to the DCT Collateral smart contract to estimate the GIANT tokens collateral value required to mint the DCT.

Collateral Value Ratio Request: The DCT Collateral smart contract sends the unique Data Provider ID to the Automated Quality Meter (AQM) smart contract. The AQM maintains a Reputation Score for each Data Provider and determines the GIANT tokens collateral value ratio required to mint a DCT based on the Reputation Score of the Data Provider. The GIANT tokens collateral value ratio required is directly proportional to the notional retail price and inversely proportional to Reputation Score. The AQM calculates the Reputation Score automatically based on the quality of service delivered by the Data Provider for previous DCTs they’ve minted. For more information about Reputation Score, see Connectivity Protocol. The AQM then sends a response to the DCT Collateral smart contract with the collateral ratio required to mint the DCT.

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Fig. 3 AQM Chart

Stake GIANT Tokens: The DCT Collateral smart contract then confirms the Data Provider has sufficient GIANT tokens in their wallet to mint the DCT, locks the required GIANT tokens collateral, and sends a response to the DCT Minting smart contract to confirm sufficient GIANT tokens collateral was provided to mint the DCT.

Mint DCT: The DCT Minting smart contract then mints the DCT for the Data Provider and transfers it to the Data Provider’s wallet. The Data Provider can now sell the DCT to anyone.

Connectivity Protocol - Accessing the Internet from Data Contract Tokens

The Connectivity Protocol enables anyone to redeem DCTs for internet access. Touchless, automated discovery of and access to connectivity networks enable a decentralized internet access layer where anyone can be a provider and consumers can switch seamlessly between networks to optimize cost and quality of service.

GIANT Protocol’s decentralized internet access is enabled by eSim for mobile data networks. eSim is a revolutionary technology that removes the requirement for physical SIM cards on mobile devices, tablets, and wearables. With all of the security of a physical SIM, eSim enables downloadable security profiles for each provider and the ability for any device to access multiple mobile data networks at the same time. Each DCT for mobile data contains within it a bootstrap eSim profile that allows any device with the DCT to discover and access the given Data Provider’s network.

GIANT Protocol also supports connection through WiFi hotspots. Anyone can share their WiFi connection with a Data Consumer. To do so, the router must be configured to be compliant with GIANT Protocol. For supported routers, a binary, certified and approved by GIANT Protocol, helps to configure the router automatically with the GIANT Protocol SSID, firewall, security, and quality of service rules. For routers not supported initially, detailed steps are provided to configure it manually. In addition, providers can upgrade their existing router with a pre-configured compatible access point, made available in collaboration with partners. The setup preserves the existing network configurations of the router, keeps the host’s private and shared network separate. Each DCT for WiFi data contains within it the SSID and password for accessing the given WiFi hotspot.

The flow of the Connectivity Protocol is described below.

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Fig. 4 Connectivity Protocol Diagram

Request Data: Once a Data Consumer has a DCT, they must stake that DCT with the Data Usage smart contract to access internet services.

Verify Usage: The Data Usage smart contract implements a verifiable Proof of Connection through which it produces a Session Evidence Document (SED) that records the amount of bandwidth consumed by the DCT in the given session. The SED is then recorded on the blockchain by the Validators, and sent to the AQM smart contract to verify delivery of service. The detailed implementation will be shared in the subsequent versions.

Assess Quality of Service: The AQM updates the Reputation Score of the Data Provider that issued the DCT based on confirmation of delivery of service as recorded in the SED via the Proof of Connection. In the degenerate case, where a Data Provider fails to provide service according to the terms of the DCT, the Data Consumer may contest the SED. This disputed SED is then sent to the DAO to adjudicate on the matter. Proof of Connection is the verifiable mechanism by which the protocol confirms or denies successful delivery of service by The Data Provider to the Data Consumer according to the terms of the DCT token. In its initial version, Proof of Connection will rely on the authority of the Data Providers to issue the SEDs, the authority of the Data Consumers to challenge these SEDs, and the judgment of the GIANT Foundation to confirm or deny the Proof of Connection as recorded in the SED. In subsequent versions the judgment will be delegated by the foundation to the DAO, and in still future versions, it is envisioned that a distributed set of “witness nodes” will each record SEDs and judgment of Proof of Connection against those SEDs will be reached through decentralized consensus. More details to follow in subsequent releases.

Release Collateral: If delivery of service is determined positively, the Data Provider’s Reputation Score is increased, thereby reducing their GIANT collateral ratio requirement for minting DCTs in the future, and the AQM sends a request to the DCT Collateral smart contract to unlock a prorated portion of the collateral locked against the given DCT. Should the DAO determine the service was not delivered according to the terms of the DCT, the AQM reduces the Reputation Score of the Data Provider and sends a request to the DCT Collateral smart contract to slash a prorated portion of the GIANT tokens collateral. This variation of Proof of Stake disincentivizes Data Providers from delivering poor quality of service.

As Data Providers deliver internet access against the DCTs they’ve minted, their Reputation Score grows. The Reputation Score is a value between 0 to 1, starting from 0 for all providers. As their Reputation Score grows, the collateral ratio required by the DCT Collateral Smart Contract and the AQM decreases. In this way, Data Providers may earn the right to be more efficient and put up less GIANT tokens collateral to mint DCTs. On the other hand, if a Data Provider’s GIANT tokens collateral is slashed for poor quality of service, their Reputation Score goes down and the collateral ratio required by the DCT Collateral Smart Contract goes up. An untrusted Data Provider will be required to over-collateralize their DCTs until they earn trust as reflected by a higher Reputation Score.

Yield Protocol - Generating Yield from Data Contract Tokens

The Yield Protocol enables data consumers and providers to unlock real world value from the money they already spend on bandwidth. Earn, pay, and invest in the future of finance using the inherent value locked inside data contracts. In the GIANT Protocol ecosystem, this inherent value is represented by the GIANT tokens collateral locked against DCTs. Yield generation on unused data balance is a great incentive offered to Data Consumers by Data Providers to capture market share.

All yield generated from DCTs goes to the DCT holder. In the case where a Data Provider has minted a DCT but a Data Consumer has not yet purchased that DCT, then the yield against that DCT would go to the Data Provider. On the other hand, once the Data Consumer purchases the DCT then the yield generated from that DCT would go to the Data Consumer.

The process of generating yield on DCT collateral is explained in more detail below.

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Fig. 5 Yield Protocol Diagram

Stake DCT: The DCT Collateral smart contract maintains the GIANT tokens collateral locked against a DCT. It is updated in response to signals from the AQM based on the SEDs produced and other external signals from an oracle, for example if the DCT expires due to a time-limit in the DCT then the GIANT tokens collateral is released. The GIANT tokens collateral locked in the DCT Collateral smart contract is sent to a Synthetic Staking smart contract to generate yield.

Route GIANT Tokens: The Synthetic Staking smart contract automatically routes the GIANT tokens collateral locked against the DCT into the Validation Bond to earn Validation Rewards or Lending Bond to earn Credit Rewards depending on the preference of the DCT-holder. More details about the Validation Bond and Lending Bond smart contracts are below.

Validation Bond

DCT collateral transferred to the Validation Bond is used to validate transactions on the GIANT Protocol blockchain network. Upon preference of the DCT-holder (Data Provider or Consumer as it may be), the DCT collateral can be used to initiate a full Validator node or to nominate another Validator node. All block rewards and associated block transaction fees will be transferred to the Synthetic Staking smart contract with a pass-through transfer to the DCT-holder’s wallet.

In the case where bandwidth is being consumed against the DCT and therefore the GIANT tokens collateral locked against that DCT is changing over time, a DCT Listener oracle is listening to the Connectivity Protocol and DCT Collateral Smart Contract to assess the amount of DCT collateral remaining. That information is then communicated to the Synthetic Staking Smart Contract to properly route Validator rewards on unused DCT collateral to the DCT-holder.

Lending Bond

An alternative path for generating yield is to route the DCT collateral to the Lending Bond smart contract. Such allocation will happen automatically by the Synthetic Staking smart contract based on the preference of the DCT-holder.

The Lending Bond smart contract will enable third-party borrowers to borrow GIANT tokens secured against approved collateral and paid for with interest. Borrowing collateral can be USDC, ETH or any other ERC-20 token allowed by the DAO. Borrowers will have to over-collateralize their loans with the initial collateral ratio of 150% due to the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies.

If GIANT token price drops below a 25 percent threshold, borrowers will be asked to add funds to their loan collateral. If the borrower declines to add funds, the entire loan collateral (USDC, ETH) will pass through to the DCT-holder. The loan collateral will be automatically exchanged for GIANT tokens on an exchange following a push-through notification to the Data Provider regarding either rerouting the GIANT tokens collateral for yield generation or receiving back the GIANT tokens collateral and burning the DCT.

At the end of their loan, borrowers can request their collateral (USDC, ETH) in return for borrowed GIANT tokens plus a borrowing fee. The borrowing fee is assigned by the DAO depending on factors, including GIANT tokens TVL and supply/demand market conditions.

The Borrowing Fee is to be transferred to the Synthetic Staking Smart Contract with a pass-through transfer to the DCT-holder’s wallet.

Tokenomics

In its steady state, GIANT Protocol’s connectivity economy is designed to maintain a balanced, liquid, and automated flow of GIANT tokens between the economy’s primary actors. The flow of GIANT tokens is depicted and described below.

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Fig. 6 Tokenomics Flow

GIANT Protocol: The protocol distributes GIANT token block rewards and block transaction fees to Validators. It also distributes incentives to Data Consumers and Data Providers to facilitate growth and health of the protocol.

DAO: The DAO receives the slashed GIANT tokens staked against DCTs by Data Providers. It also receives the slashed GIANT tokens staked by Validators. The DAO may elect to A) redistribute the GIANT tokens it receives to Data Consumers to incentivize data usage, or B) redistribute the GIANT tokens it receives to Validators to incentivize good Validators, or C) use it for funding protocol development efforts and community building.

Validators: Validators receive GIANT token block rewards and block transaction fees when they validate blocks on the GIANT Protocol blockchain. Validators’ GIANT tokens bonding stakes get slashed when they falsify blocks on the GIANT Protocol blockchain.

Data Consumers: Consumers buy DCTs with GIANT tokens. Consumers earn yield in GIANT tokens for staking the GIANT tokens collateral locked in the DCTs they’ve purchased. Consumers may receive a portion of the slashed GIANT tokens staked against DCTs in case of poor quality of service.

Data Providers: Data Providers receive GIANT tokens from Consumers for DCTs. Data Providers’ GIANT tokens collateral locked against the DCTs they mint are slashed in case of poor quality of service.

Governance

Governance refers to the rules and procedures by which improvements are made to the GIANT Protocol and decisions are made with respect to the treasury, the GIANT Protocol and the broader community and ecosystem. The GIANT Protocol is designed to be governed by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and implemented on a public ledger through decentralized consensus of Validators.

Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)

The DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that will manage the GIANT Protocol. The protocol anticipates designing the genesis DAO as a representative democracy elected by GIANT Protocol’s token holders. This mechanism for governance best balances broad participation with effective decision-making. The goal is to ensure that those who provide and consume data through GIANT Protocol have a meaningful share of voice in governance, that the majority of the stake can always command the decisions of the DAO, and that it is easy for the community to participate in those decisions.

The GIANT Foundation

The GIANT Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting GIANT Protocol, its ecosystem, and related technologies. The foundation’s role is to allocate resources to critical projects and advocate for GIANT Protocol to the outside world. The foundation manages all aspects of the GIANT Protocol. The foundation will work with third party commercial entities to implement the protocols, manage the user experience, and provide open source reference implementations in the best long-term interest of GIANT Protocol.

The Company

ShareG, Inc. is the commercial entity contracted by the foundation to manage the development of the open source reference implementation and the closed source apps, to market the service, and to develop commercial contracts with service and infrastructure providers. In addition, the company is also responsible for session management, reputation system, smart notifications and arbitration in the early stages of the network. It is also envisaged that multiple commercial providers implement the protocol to provide a different user experience to end users.

Reference Implementation

The first version of the implementation contains the following components:

Wallet is an open source wallet implementation to store tokens traded on GIANT Protocol’s native blockchain. The consumer software, provider software and validator node software integrate the wallet to store and make transactions.

Consumer software enables the end users to discover, use, pay, earn, and invest in crypto using GIANT tokens and DCTs. Client software is initially going to be developed for popular mobile operating systems.

Provider software configures a bootstrap eSim, or a home router, a mobile hotspot or a proprietary GIANT Protocol access point to provide users with access to the internet.

Validator node software is an open-source node implementation to enable anyone to become a validator and add blocks to the blockchain.

Decentralized Application (dApp)

GIANT Connect is the first commercial consumer software implementation where consumers can enjoy the benefits of GIANT Protocol and Data Providers can easily publish their data contracts as Data Contract Tokens. As of the time of writing, using inflight, mobile eSim, and premium hotspot data through GIANT Connect is the only way to earn GIANT tokens and become a member of the GIANT Protocol Community. Over time new capabilities will come to market first through GIANT Connect, for example yield rewards on unused airtime.

To encourage all users to interact with the GIANT Protocol irrespective of whether they have been exposed to Blockchain and cryptographic tokens before, the dApp allows users to transact in fiat currencies like the US dollar. This eliminates the need for users to maintain a balance of Ether (or GIANT tokens) if they prefer to transact in fiat currencies.

Known Limitations

This section describes conscious choices and known limitations in the current design of GIANT Protocol’s connectivity economy.

The purpose of this litepaper is to give insights into the vision, the overall ecosystem, it’s components and the tokenomics at a high-level, without going into the low-level implementation details of the types of nodes, how to become a node, economics of being a node, consensus mechanism and details of Proof of Connection. Some additional known limitations include:

Current DCT design only accommodates prepaid data plans. Postpaid data plans, contracts that buy consumers the right to use data at a future time at a previously negotiated price, are not yet supported. One could imagine support for long-term contracts through a new type of token that is a data futures contract.

Quantitative models for key system variables, for example Reputation Score, GIANT Collateral Value, and GIANT Collateral Release, are to be defined. The governance of these key system variables will be under the direction of the DAO.

Lastly, this version of the document focuses on the design of a system that tokenizes bandwidth. Future versions of this document or the DAO may address the gaps in the Teller, Connectivity, and Yield Protocol.

Conclusion

This paper outlines a proposal to form a Decentralized Connectivity Economy and seeks public feedback on the proposed solution.

To realize the ultimate vision of forming one internet, accessible to anyone, owned by everyone, all users of bandwidth across the globe can realize greater efficiency and lower individual cost (or even profit potential) by uniting and forming more interconnected broadband coordination communities. It is the collective effort of these distributed communities that will accelerate further development and adoption of the GIANT Protocol, by data consumers and existing network owners alike. Our ultimate vision is to make internet access more than a boring utility, transforming it into an exciting opportunity for better, faster, and more accessible internet access and accompanying financialization potential. The GIANT Protocol seeks to leverage existing networks, but through tokenizing of bandwidth, rewarding all the participants and driving greater network efficiency.

The GIANT Protocol team invites everyone to join and contribute as the foundation for the Last, Singular, Trusted, Shared, Secure, Incentivized, Open, Protocol-Based, Planet-wide, Public Decentralized Internet Access Layer is established.

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* GIANT Foundation’s legal name is GIANT Protocol Foundation

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