Our next community call is coming up this Thursday.
It’s a summary of all the exciting improvements we’ve pushed to the FOAM Map in the past few weeks.
Sign up here:
FOAM Map Upgrades Community Call (Mar 7- 12PM EST)
Daryl_Foam
#2
Do check out these links for some context on what we will be covering on the Community Call, looking forward to everyone joining us!
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Daryl_Foam
#3
The FOAM Bi-Weekly Community Call - FOAM Map Upgrades recording has been uploaded!
It’s a summary of all the exciting improvements we’ve pushed to the FOAM Map in the past few weeks.
Daryl_Foam
#4
I’ll be posting the Summary on Discourse instead and break it up in different comments on this thread.
FOAM Map Upgrades Community Call Summary
In this call, which is the 4th Bi-Weekly FOAM Community Call, we went through the new features on the FOAM Map, and we were joined by Caleb who presented the leaderboard and Bryan showed some of the learnings and some of the things we have seen since the Signal Heatmap release and Arthur will be talked about the Gamification incentives that have been tested on the FOAM Map.
We again started with answering questions that had been sent in on the google forms first and also from the Youtube Live Chat. Do join us for this chat session in the next community call!
Questions (0:56-10:30)
I’m keen to figure out how to use my FOAM tokens to stake a location on the map. Also keen to understand notifications works so that I can manage my stakes* .
There are guides directly on https://mapguide.foam.space which explains how to do both of these. The Email Notifications just launched and will notify you of updates on your POIs and if you need help on these, feel free to email to support@foam.space or join the Discourse https://discourse.foam.space
At what point will we be able to utilize geo-fencing?
Geo-Fencing is an interesting concept and it definitely one that can be utilised with Dynamic Proof of Location.
However, with that said, using the geo-encoding standards such as the Crypto Spatial Coordinate Registry that we have, you can design applications that use geo-logic that include Geo-Fencing.
That’s something that can be done with the FOAM Mapping Tools but with Dynamic Proof of Location, it would be more robustly implemented. If you’re interested in learning more on building your own application, do check out the developer portal here http://developer.foam.space
Are there any implementations of State Channels on the FOAM Map?
We are not aware of anyone using State Channels building on the FOAM Map, We are however using State Channels in our research on Dynamic Proof of Location and running tests on the Geo-Pickle.
Like we said, any application can now be built or designed on the FOAM Map and those applications could open a state channel with a specific point. Those tools are definitely available for people to use.
There are FOAM Tokens that are allocated for mining rewards but how will they be distributed? Wouldn't ERC20 Tokens require Gas for every pay out?*
The best place to read up on that is the recent blog post that we have published which goes over what is a zone and how is a zone anchor formed. It also goes over how the Zones will be rewarded.
The Total FOAM Area Reward (TFAR) Contract will be the contract that determines the rewards, and it will look at how old the Zone is, how much area it is covering, how much pair-wise connections it has with other zone anchors and what is the total FOAM Token Staked on it and also how many signals are there nearby.
Essentially, the mining rewards will be determined by the TFAR Contract on a case-by-case basis, but these parameters can’t be finalised until there is mass testing and that is what we will be looking to our community for when we release the specifications for Radios and begin testing in different test networks and connecting that to software of the blockchain stack that contains state channels or tendermint consensus and once we can run test-nets in different locations, that is when reward hard-coding would be finalised.
How does FOAM integrate with LEO deployments?
LEO stands for Low-Earth Orbit satelites and it is totally possible that one of those devices could operate as a zone anchor as the time-sync protocol is radio agnostic and it is possible that we could have certain actors that are in space, but that is something to keep in mind and not what we are pushing for now but once we see larger LEO Deployments they could be interacting with the protocol for sure.
Is the process getting easier or harder.
This is a recurring question and as Ryan answered last time, the ecosystem and the tooling has been improving and increasing so it is definitely getting easier.
Check the previous response in full here :
Is signaling and offering dpol a conflict in terms of gaming the reward system?
It is definitely possible to game but it’s not necessarily a conflict.
As you can be both a signaler and a zone operator, to boost your own rewards but the signal wont just apply to you. If you have the signal there, that may attract other zone operators and that bonus would be split among others.
You can always try to give yourself a bonus from operating the protocol and even if you get a higher weighted reward you are still doing the work and doing the service and not committing fraud and because you are the first one there and you have enough other tokens to Signal you can reap those rewards but you are actually setting up the network so that it benefits all other participants as well.
Daryl_Foam
#5
Bryan Analyzing the Map (10.56 -21:56)
Bryan took the time to present on some findings and analysis on the map since the launch of the Sigaling Heatmap. He also posted these findings on Discourse a few days earlier as well.
Heatmap is a way to view signal placement on a very broad level, confirming the Signal Design hypothesis. As a refresher, Signals are a way to signal places with demand for Dynamic Proof of Location.
The Signal Heatmap is a real time visualisation of Signals clumped together and basically shows places with clear demand for Dynamic Proof of Location.
Signals map the hidden spaces between POIs. Heatmaps let us see this.
Watch the video to listen to Bryan give a walkthrough of a few theories you can make from looking at the heatmap clusters that popped up on the map and his analysis on what those heatmaps could mean.
One other area that popped up was Phoenix, with 20 Signals placed all around the town makes a clear indicator to us that it might be a good place to, let’s say, run a DPoL pilot, even though the city was not necessarily on our radar before.
Shifting from the Signal Heatmaps, another interesting trend on the FOAM Map that Bryan highlighted is Bologna and it’s very personal POIs placed on the Map.
It’s the work of @ntotao who has gone into Bologna and registered POIs with some personal touches and “insider information” that would not have been known to other people otherwise.
The same way that you would feel more incentivized to recommend personalized locations to a friend, versus a stranger over google maps, FOAM Map users sometimes like to share places that are more meaningful to them if they know that ultimately they are being discovered by someone else in the community.
Caleb on the leaderboard, next features and collecting community feedback (22:10-31:20)
We took the chance to re-invite Caleb on to the Community Call to present on the FOAM Map Leaderboard, the beta of which was launched here on Discourse
There’s been great community feedback and activity around this leaderboard and that’s been amazing to see.
Leaderboards add value to Cartographers in two main ways.
- Recognition of contributions to the map
- It is also building a reputation system for cartographers (An early form of reputation as a cartographer)
Caleb walked us through the functionality of the leaderboard and also brought up some interesting observations that were made by looking through it and also from the Discourse Thread.
He also gave a short demo on how you can use the Leaderboard to track recent activity on the FOAM map by addresses.
One interesting observation is that
I see Cartographers are specializing in two areas:
- Those who focus on adding points; and
- Those who focus on verifying points.
So far, it is uncommon for a participant to have a high rankings across all four categories.
But the whole point of releasing this beta now is also to get feedback from the community on bugs and missing features. Fortunately a few bugs have been fixed already thanks to community feedback
Caleb has also already started working on the 3Box profile integration which Ryan shared earlier on Discourse.
If you want to be ready as soon as the feature is released, you can setup your Ethereum address now at 3box.io
We’re also hoping to understand what other information is helpful in making decisions using the TCR, like maybe a list of all points a user has added, the results of each challenge, a display for badges and NFTs, and so on.
We are really excited to watch this launch this week and we have seen that the interest that the leaderboard has generated already and the discussions among the community growth, and it is very promising.
Arthur on incentives & gamification (31:30 - End)
This section in the community call was an overview of the post that Arthur posted earlier last week. You can read that in detail here:
When we talk about the incentives and gamification, we are talking about the ways to further incentivise points of interest creation as well as other interactions with the FOAM Map such as challenging or voting.
But we started thinking on what are the ways to further get more points on the map and get more users to participate in the map which lead to the creation of the Treasure Hunt Campaign,
And further developed into, as Arthur mentioned during the call, the gamification efforts around the FOAM Map into two categories, Explicit Gamification and Implicit Gamification.
Campaigns such as the Holiday Treasure Hunt and theNew Lab NFT Event were designed not only as marketing campaigns but also as ways to increase community engagement on the FOAM Map. These campaigns also further validated multiple thesis that we had come up with during the game design.
- Does the FOAM Map provide a good framework for spatial games?
- Did it get people using the FOAM Map?
- Do non-unique NFTs also provide an incentive for adding points?
- Do extrinsic campaigns produce high quality points?
You can watch the video to listen to Arthur explain the thinking behind these initial tests that we ran as examples of Explicit Gamifications or you can read the post which goes in depth.
Implicit Gamification: human-focused design that utilizes game elements
The first example of which is the Leaderboard which by itself does We of course want to take this a few steps further and the identity integration via 3box is merely the first step for this. Other things would be Badges and reputation and we are very interested in what the community thinks on what would be cool to display on your page and more. We see this as a first of potentially many ways to incentivise actions on the FOAM Map.
Next steps ?
We will continue doing tests, but before that we need to do more experimentation with automating some of the processes and working on further game mechanics. We also think that coordination around these campaigns can be improved. For that your feedback and ideas are very valuable.
Ultimately, with all of this, we are looking to validate to developers that the FOAM Map is a great framework for creating blockchain based spatial applications, especially efforts that involve the incentivisation and coordination of communities (like games).
If you are a developer wanting to be involved in our gamification efforts or a game designer that wants to build on the FOAM Map, please get in touch (arthur at foam.space). We are currently looking at formalizing a fund and grant structure for exactly this purpose.
Also make sure to visit our developer portal:
https://f-o-a-m.github.io/foam.developer/index.html