Startups

The Objects of Desire (OoD) are future-proof NFT-based products and experiences for the multiverse, created by the world’s leading architects, product designers, and technologists.

Niko Klansek

Objects of Desire

Chainlink is blockchain middleware that allows smart contracts to access key off-chain resources like data feeds, various web APIs, and traditional bank account payments. By providing smart contracts secure access to these key resources, ChainLink allows them to mimic real world agreements that require external proof of performance and need to make payment in widely available payment methods e.g. bank payments.

The Chainlink Network is a decentralized network of ChainLink Nodes, which are all selling usage of specific data feeds, APIs and various off-chain payment capabilities directly to a smart contract. Any data, payments, e-signature, or other API provider, as well as individual developers, can easily join the network by connecting an API they're familiar with. Once the API they'd like to offer to smart contracts is connected to a ChainLink, they become a ChainLink Node Operator, responsible for keeping that API connected to the ChainLink Network and being compensated in LINK for their successful fulfillment of on-chain requests.

Chainlink

Filecoin (⨎) is an open-source, public, cryptocurrency and digital payment system intended to be a blockchain-based cooperative digital storage and data retrieval method. It is made by Protocol Labs and builds on top of InterPlanetary File System, allowing users to rent unused hard drive space.

Filecoin

In this document, we outline the design for a Lightning Service Authentication Token (LSAT) for future services created by Lightning Labs. This specification is open source, with contributions accepted at our LSAT specification repository.  LSATs are a new standard protocol for authentication and paid APIs developed by Lightning Labs. LSATs can serve both as authentication, as well as a payment mechanism (one can view it as a ticket) for paid APIs. In order to obtain a token, we require the user to pay us over Lightning in order to obtain a pre-image, which itself is a cryptographic component of the final LSAT token.

The implementation of the authentication token is chosen to be macaroons, as they allow us to package attributes and capabilities along with the token. This system allows us to automate pricing on the fly and allows for a number of novel constructs such as automated tier upgrades. In another light, this can be viewed as a global HTTP 402 reverse proxy at the load balancing level for all our services.

LSAT

Gitcoin is the easiest way to leverage the open source community to incentivize or monetize work. Do More Work, Faster.

Gitcoin

Protocol Labs is a research, development, and deployment institution for improving Internet technology. We create software systems that tackle significant challenges. We aim to solve them with new technology breakthroughs, great user experience design, and an open-source approach to creation. We believe the internet has become humanity's most important technology. We build protocols, systems, and tools to improve how it works. Today, we are focused on how we store, locate, and move information.

Protocol Labs

Tether is bringing real world currency to the blockchain.

Launched in 2014, Tether is a blockchain-enabled platform designed to facilitate the use of fiat currencies in a digital manner. Tether works to disrupt the conventional financial system via a more modern approach to money. Tether has made headway by giving customers the ability to transact with traditional currencies across the blockchain, without the inherent volatility and complexity typically associated with a digital currency. As the first blockchain-enabled platform to facilitate the digital use of traditional currencies (a familiar, stable accounting unit), Tether has democratised cross-border transactions across the blockchain.

We believe in greater freedom, security, and access to money. That’s why we built the first real-world currency platform on the Bitcoin Blockchain. Tether provides a secure, fast, and low-cost way to store, send, and receive money on the Blockchain as if it were bitcoin.

Tether

A browser for the next-generation Web. Beaker is an experimental browser for exploring and building the peer-to-peer Web.

Beaker is a more powerful browser, for a more powerful Web. We believe the Web is at its best when it empowers creation and encourages participation. That's why we're building a browser for a person-to-person Web.

The Web enabled communication, collaboration, and creativity at a scale once unimaginable, but it's devolved into a landscape of isolated platforms that discourage customization and interoperability. The Web's value flows from the people who use it, yet our online experiences are dictated by corporations whose incentives rarely align with our own.

We believe the Web can (and must) be a people-first platform, where everybody is invited to create, personalize, and share.

That's why we're using peer-to-peer technology to improve how we create, share, and connect on the Web.

Beaker

Litecoin is a cryptocurrency that enables instant payments to anyone in the world and that can be efficiently mined with consumer-grade hardware.

Litecoin

Flow is a fast, secure, and developer-friendly blockchain built to support the next generation of games, apps, and the digital assets that power them.

Flow, a fast and developer-friendly blockchain built to support entire ecosystems of apps, games, and the digital assets that power them.

Every other decentralized blockchain’s plans for scaling depend on some kind of sharding or side chains. Unfortunately, our team recognized early on that these approaches make interactivity between smart contracts significantly more complex and error-prone.

In other words, sharding is a good solution for payments, but not for an ecosystem of complex applications like games or social networks.

After nearly two years of research, Dapper Labs is happy to present Flow, a blockchain design that can meet mainstream developer and consumer expectations without sharding the network or compromising decentralization.

Flow has a pipelined architecture that separates the jobs typically done by a single node across five different node types, significantly reducing redundant effort and improving efficiency. To support this approach, the Flow team developed a new cryptographic technique called Specialized Proofs of Confidential Knowledge (SPoCKs) to address the Verifier’s Dilemma.

Flow rethinks many other design choices to improve usability for developers and consumers alike, including upgradable smart contracts, human-readable security, and more. The protocol is secured via a variant of HotStuff, a Proof of Stake consensus algorithm developed by VMware Research.

This approach empowers developers to safely and easily build on top of each others’ code, creating entirely new products and services at an accelerating pace. This is known as composability.

Flow is a dependable platform for applications that can provide entirely new features and benefits to their users.

Examples of experiences that can be powered by Flow include: artists or bands using crypto tokens to give millions of fans unprecedented new ways to show their fandom; games that reward players for adding value and enable assets and identities that users can take across infinite open environments; or platforms for sports fans around the world to trade verified, authentic, limited-edition digital memorabilia in real-time.

Users of Dapper Wallet and players of CryptoKitties and Cheeze Wizards, will be the first to receive early access to see, test, and play with upcoming experiences on Flow.

Once Flow is live, players will be able to use Dapper Wallet to take CryptoKitties into applications on Flow, benefiting from a new universe of games and other apps that will emerge there.

Objects of Desire

The building blocks of the multiverse.