Introduction to Histograph, a visual storytelling of the past decade
It’s now been more than 12 years since the first block was mined on the Bitcoin blockchain and almost 13 years since Bitcoin, as an idea, was first discussed as a viable alternative to fiat.
Although great odds were against it and most of the people initially involved were skeptics, Bitcoin and its underlying technology, has not only survived but gained mainstream attention and has captured the imagination of millions of people around the world. The path to present times has sometimes been treacherous and dark, leaving little room for hope, but most times it has been exciting and fun as hell. Then, in 2015, Ethereum was launched and introduced the concept of smart contracts. Programmable money became a thing and we are still to discover the implications of that innovation.
A revolution is taking place
It will upend financial dogmas, ossified systems of power and will liberate individuals from the grip of the old and opaque structures of control. We are all passive or active witnesses to these events but our lives will be shaped by their outcomes.
We went from one cryptocurrency to a Cambrian explosion of innovation and ludicrous degree of variety of themes and ideas. Not all that has been brought into being is worthy of its time in the sun but progress, however messy and uneven, has undoubtedly been made.
But is there a logical record of everything that has happened so far?
Considering all this, we think that building an NFT platform that enables users to write history and arrange events on a timeline is a worthwhile undertaking. But history can sometimes be quite boring so we decided the best way to present it is in a visual, entertaining way, through NFTs.
That means that every event will be represented by an image or audio file, or both, thus making the whole experience much more engaging.
So let’s get into what Histograph actually is
It’s first and foremost an NFT platform but with an unique differentiating factor. Each of our NFTs will represent an event that will be published on a timeline thus giving them context and direction.
Secondly, Histograph is visual storytelling. A way to represent the short but exciting history of the crypto space in a fun and engaging way. Visuals first approach facilitates that.
Thirdly, Histograph is a community project because the visibility on the timeline of each NFT will be strictly tied to the number of votes it receives. So, the more votes the higher the visibility of that NFT and the higher chances of it becoming the image burned into peoples memory representing that particular event. We want the community to decide what is relevant and what is not. Lower ranked NFTs will still be on the timeline but less visible.
How it works
It all starts with the timeline. It is the anchor of our storytelling.
So let’s say you think that the Ethereum genesis is a relevant crypto related event (duh!). You’ll want to add that as an event to the timeline. You’ll put all the relevant data and a description in the form. Once the information is verified by our curators, the event will be visible on the timeline.
Currently the event is just a boring textual description. It needs life. It needs fuzz. It needs something memorable.
Once the event is visible on the timeline any user will be able to add a multimedia file to it, one that he considers best suited to the description of the event. We’ll wrap it up as an NFT and after it has been reviewed by our curators, we’ll make it visible on the timeline.
We now have an event with a relevant description and an entertaining NFT that represents it.
Of course, anybody is free to post any NFT they like. In fact, we are sure that we’ll have a quite a few NFTs competing for the sweet spot.
The sweet spot
Our community of token holders will decide which is the most relevant NFT for any particular event. The NFT gathering the most votes will be the cover of that event thus gaining the hotspot, the focus, the primetime.
Interested in purchasing the NFT on the cover of the Dogecoin genesis? Or the Polkadot genesis? Or the event representing the launch of Binance? You get the picture…w
The participants
Well, we’ll need writers and artists to help us populate it. We like to call them Scribes. Our thinking is we want to make it as easy as possible to upload images unto the platform and write short descriptions of the events. But that will not suffice. We also need Curators to, well, curate all that is being uploaded. We want to have as many events and images on our timeline but we also need to make sure that a quality standard is being met. We don’t want NSFW content uploaded and we also want to make sure that the events are correctly described and dated. We’ll also have an appeals system whereby users, artists and writers can appeal a decision made by curators to make sure there is no foul play on their part.
We will have five types of users. Administrators, Curators, Scribes (artists and writers), token holding Users and Visitors.
Administrators are team members or, in rare cases, committed members of our community, that are in charge of creating public or private timelines and assign curator roles. Their job is to keep everyone honest.
Curators are selected from our community, or sometimes from outside of it, and are responsible for reviewing uploaded content to make sure entries are correctly dated, content is decent and complete. Further down the road they will have to be token holders so we can apply a slash function to their holdings in case they go rogue.
Scribes are either artists or writers, in our opinion most often these roles will overlap, and play the most important part on our platform. They create content and upload it unto the timeline. We will attract great talent and a large variety of viewpoints which will make Histograph relevant to most users.
Users are also very important to the platform as they will basically assign relevance to each entry by way of their vote. In order to avoid instances of spam voting we are giving the right to vote only to token holders. Voting power will be dependent on token holdings. We want to make it fair to all users but still reward the commitment of larger token holders.
Visitors are users that do not hold tokens and therefore cannot engage with the platform. They can only view events and enjoy the content created and uploaded by the Scribes.
Considering the amazing achievements of some people in the space we think it would be great if we would also issue NFTs representing them and their contributions to the development of crypto. They are part of history and should most definitely take their place on the timeline.
Let’s talk bread and butter now.
First of all Scribes need to have an incentive to publish content on our platform so them having the possibility of selling that content is essential. We also want to reward Curators for their efforts and, of course, we need to cover our operating expenses as well. So there will have to be a fee attached to each sale as is usually the case. We’ll announce the fee structure once our platform in launched but we are inclined to go for a lower fee structure as the higher average value of our NFTs will make up for the smaller percentage we might be charging. Our NFTs are not random artworks but imbued with meaning and the unique placement in time. They also come with the added advantage of being ranked, through voting, by the community so the most voted ones should further increase in value as high interest usually means higher prices.
This is what we have embarked upon and this is the way it will work. We think Histograph.com will grow and develop into something that will amaze every one of us but first comes the hard grind of lifting it off the ground. Counting on each one of you reading this post to help us in making this happen.
P.S. As we’ve been getting some questions about our $HIST token and if there will be a sale we want to publish another post in a few weeks outlining our plans in this respect.
First, let’s build a community!
Join us:
Telegram https://t.me/histograph_com
Discord https://discord.gg/RJDnP676MV
