The crypto and blockchain market moves in waves and we are currently in the era of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In the first quarter of 2021, NFTs are arguably the most popular trend. Due to the unique and peculiar use case of these non-fungible tokens, they will certainly stay longer than previous waves like altcoins, ICOs, etc. NFTs are digital collectibles that are stored on a blockchain network. They are indivisible crypto assets that can be used to represent a variety of real-world assets like artworks, music, real estate, etc.
During the first quarter of 2021, more than $2 billion was spent on non-fungible tokens according to a report by NonFungible.com. The market increased by a whopping 2100% within the same period. Such market growth points to the fact that more people are embracing this current trend of tokenizing their assets.
PRuF is a unique platform that seeks to help users tokenize their assets seamlessly and simply. It is an asset provenance platform where people can ascertain the authenticity of the products they purchase online or elsewhere. Every item you tokenize with PRuF is provably yours and it cannot be stolen or lost. This is one of a kind platform that can help you cost-effectively protect your real-world assets. Aside from private individuals, PRuF also enables businesses and companies to link their products and assets to cryptographic NFTs.
Interview with the CEO of PRuF
It is very great to have you on this platform and many people are eager to hear from you. Please kindly introduce yourself.
Hello everyone, my name is Clifford Smyth, and I am CEO and a lead dev at PRüF.io. I've been building software for most of my life, and my work at PRüF is what I’m here to talk about today.
I've followed blockchain technology since bitcoin was still theoretical – the idea of Merkle tree ledgers is actually pretty old, but it was “Satoshi Nakomoto” that brought the incentives into line to make it happen.
Watching that develop changed my thinking on distributed systems because it showed that the alignment of incentives is the key to making it work.
Since then, I have incorporated that insight into much of my work, and it is a fundamental basis for everything we engineer at PRüF.
Thank you for that concise and brief introduction. Can you give us a brief overview of what PRuF is all about? What is PRuF?
At its core, PRüF is a privacy-first, chain agnostic, NFT based protocol for managing and verifying physical and digital items.
PRüF lets brands and PRüF Node holders create NFT assets based on digital or physical goods. PRüF assets feature permanent blockchain media and document storage, monetizable business logic, and an authentic, brand focused user experience.
PRüF provides instant verification of ownership, authenticity, and item provenance to users, and PRüF assets are designed to be what NFTs should have been from the start – durable, platform independent, functional, and self-contained.
How did you come up with such an idea? People would like to know the inspiration behind the creation of PRuF.
PRüF was inspired by a desire to privately hold assets in a provable way without invoking governments, coercive force, or giving up privacy in the process. We think we have done a really great job of making a protocol that makes that possible for all of humanity.
On the way, we discovered a lot of other use cases, so we made sure that the protocol can support just about any NFT scenario, and do it better than any other platform or protocol in existence. Platforms built with the PRüF protocol will leave legacy NFT platforms behind in terms of features, durability, interoperability, and product presentation.
the origins of PRüF go back to a project we started in 2017. in 2017 part of the PRüF dev team created “beancoin”, a toy project that provided basic income based on coffee bean production for small farms in the carribean.
the “beancoin” hobby project evolved into an idea, “Alethea”, which is targeted at authenticating provable facts to combat AI based threats to objective reporting – like Deepfakes and related technology.
We hypothesized that as technology advanced it would become impossible to distinguish authentic reporting from AI generated falsehoods – and we are seeing that become a reality now.
A vibrant, balanced, and at least mostly factual free press is fundamental to an operating democracy.
Governments exist to collect, process, and act upon policy created based on data.
Democracy uses crowdsourcing as a way to get accurate information, and the press is the eyes of a democracy. Historically, democracies have been more efficient than more centralized forms of government.
With media poisoned by AI driven propaganda and falsehoods, along with socially targeted disinformation platforms, democratic efficiency and efficacy is at risk. If you compound that with the incredible leaps in efficient mass surveillance through smart devices and phones, autocracies are quickly gaining ground against democracies in their ability to collect and analyze actionable data. With the huge data funnels available to modern despots, the historical efficiency advantage of democratic governance is headed toward reversal, if it's not already there.
We see this as a clear and present danger to democracy globally, and see an urgent need to begin to reign in the capacity of bad actors to perpetrate falsehoods and other forms of social and socioeconomic violence.
PRüF is an ancillary development of the Alethea ideal, and a step towards that goal. Eventually, we hope to expand the scope of PRüF to include the verification and tokenization of verifiable factual reporting, unifying the Alethea vision with the success of PRüF.
PRuF is relatively a new project in the NFT market, what are your major accomplishments so far?
Looking back, we’ve actually accomplished an amazing amount of progress. We've got all of the core contracts done and the first generation are audited. We have an amazing application experience, designed both as a default interface to the protocol and an example for developers to use as a whitebox template. We have an easy to use, well documented, and powerful library to facilitate developer integrations, and we have an amazing and vibrant community.
Our partnerships give us strong PR outreach, and we have projects underway with influential launch partners that will help to position PRüF as the premier solution for serious curation of digital art. So far, we are on track with our roadmap, and we are making incredible progress every day.
On your company’s website, it is stated that PRuF is a privacy-first platform. People would like you to explain what that means and how your platform protects user privacy.
The key fact is that the PRüF protocol does not store personally identifiable information on the blockchain. This is an important feature because the blockchain is a living public document. Anything stored on the blockchain is public.
PRüF hashes user data to create digital “shadows” of the information it is given, and the original information is not stored. Like a single shadow, the data cannot be used to recreate the original scene, but it is a unique imprint that can be used to verify that a given scene matches the shadow or does not. Unlike an actual shadow, though, there is no efficient way to iterate through possible matches – doing so would require billions of years even with the most powerful computers.
By not storing your information, your data is simply not there to be breached.
Using the hashed data, PRüF allows a specific user (and only that user) to prove that they are the owner or authorized party to a specified asset. This limitation prevents “looking up” users' listings on the blockchain.
While privacy is important, sometimes we wish to make things public. PRüF allows for this by optionally linking assets to publicly accessible data online. This way, users can publish what they want to make public while retaining control of their privacy.
What is the value of the PRuF ecosystem to long-term investors? In the crypto market, most investors focus on the short-term price of a project’s token. Is there any long-term benefit of holding the PRuF token?
The PRüF utility token is used in many ways within the PRüF contract network. It is used in microtransactions for network operations, it is burned to create PRüF Nodes, and it can be used as a medium of exchange for the commerce of NFTs and physical goods in the ecosystem. In addition to this, PRüF will be used in governance. By staking PRüF on profitable nodes to earn dividends, or by staking on political nodes that support their interests, stakers boost the voting power of those nodes in community governance. We think that the utility applications and potential for burning and mass staking represent excellent propositions for long term token value. In addition to this, the team is fully incentivised to create long term value, as the teams tokens are unlocked over 4 years starting in 2022.
There are several real-world asset tokenizing platforms out there today and many more will undoubtedly spring up in the future. Why would anyone want to choose PRuF over the other platforms? What advantage does your platform have over the others in the market?
The key to our success is that we are a protocol, not a platform. PRüF is multi-chain and is used to BUILD NFT Platforms for brands, creators, businesses, and organizations. We don’t compete with NFT platforms in the same way that a concrete block company isn’t competing with homebuilders.
In the digital art and artifact NFT space, the PRüF protocol enhances, instead of competing with, NFT tokenization platforms. As a protocol, PRüF can be utilized by NFT tokenization platforms to enhance their offerings and give their customers market leading, interchain operable functionality without the giant investment in technical work that that would normally entail. It's a win-win proposition.
Adoption is a huge issue for new projects in the blockchain space, how do you plan to solve the problem of slow adoption for the PRuF project?
One of the key features of PRüF is that we have sought out and designed ways that users can be onboarded without them having to know anything about the blockchain or even using a wallet of any kind.
Manufacturers using PIP, for example, create PRüF assets en masse as a way to ensure supply chain integrity. End users can verify product authenticity, and even if they never import the items into a wallet, they are still PRüF users and can activate the advanced features at any time. In many cases, we expect that manufacturers will be paying for the on-chain transactions, as the enduring value that is created for recurring customer interactions will more than outweigh the cost on economical chains. In other markets, we have a way of transferring token ownership in real-space, using what is in effect a “bearer bond” model, where the physical holder of an article can import the associated NFT into their address if they wish to, but in most cases it will probably remain anonymously held. Nonetheless, by owning a PRüF enabled asset, they are a PRüF user.
As I mentioned earlier, since PRüF doesn’t compete with NFT platforms, and instead provides a wide range of critical features “for free”, PRüF will usher in sweeping changes to the NFT space, powering a generation of new and updated platforms.
Do you plan to list on any exchange? If yes, how soon can that be?
Yes, definitely. After our planned IDO in late Q2, we will be aggressively pursuing listings on centralized exchanges as well as DEXes on every blockchain on which the protocol is deployed.
As a relatively new project, there must be some challenges facing the PRuF project at the moment. What is the biggest challenge you are facing right now and how are you handling it to ensure your users have the best experience on the PRuF platform?
The main challenges we face at this juncture are getting PRüF the exposure and publicity it deserves, as well as the ongoing fast pace of development. The team has been working very hard to ensure the best possible UX experience (as you can see in the video on our homepage) and minor tweaks are being made all the time to improve the capabilities of the contract network. While this does create a high workload for the team, we are also carefully offloading non-core tasks to employees and partners, which helps us to keep focused on core development.
There have been a number of new projects that started well, but they are nowhere to be found today. How can PRuF users be sure that it is going to be around for the long term?
As I mentioned before, the incentives of the pruf team are carefully aligned to create lasting value. Our tokens get unlocked over 4 years starting in 2022, and we are also incentivised to ensure the success of nodes, because a portion of node revenue will be used to fund ongoing development. As long term hodlers and ideological believers, we are deeply committed to the long term success of PRüF for many reasons.
In addition to this, PRüF represents a significant investment in intellectual property by the IP holders, so they are also committed to ensure the success of the project. In all, steps have been taken at every juncture to check and adjust incentives to ensure that the project moves to fruition regardless of external market conditions.
