What is TEKKON, the popular Web3 product in Japan?

Author: Daily Planet

Recently, a Web3 product called TEKKON has attracted the attention of the BBC. Many channels in Asia have reported on this product, and this Web3 project, which has not received much attention from the encryption world, also came out of the circle in an unexpected way.

TEKKON is a Web3 product popular in Japan. The product is operated by the Whole Earth Foundation and has issued its own WEC token. It currently has more than 130,000 users worldwide.

Social Contribution Web3 Games

In TEKKON's Twitter introduction, this project uses an interesting concept to define itself - social contribution Web3 game. How does this project contribute to society?

When players shoot eligible infrastructure in real-world cities, they can get game rewards, which are issued using the game's native token WEC.

Specifically, players need to photograph damaged infrastructure (such as utility poles). The project party will share this infrastructure information with the municipal authorities and infrastructure companies in your city. In this way, relevant parties can obtain information about damaged infrastructure and make timely repairs.

When players create a TEKKON account, they will receive a pet dog NFT for free. The game rewards obtained can make the dog grow, and the game rewards can also be exchanged for LinePay points. LinePay is a payment function supported by the popular SMS App in Japan. Every LinePay point can be used to deduct 1 yen when paying.

There are other ways to earn rewards besides taking photos in person. In order to filter invalid data, the infrastructure photos uploaded by players need to be reviewed by other players, and the players who review can get game rewards.

Acting on the real world, is the vision too ideal?

Unlike previous Web3 applications whose value is entirely on the chain, TEKKON is a Web3 application that works in the real world. The team sees this application as having quite a practical positive impact on society.

For example, Japan has about 15 million sewer-related sewage wells, and about 3 million of them have exceeded their service life. However, the maintenance department cannot keep abreast of the latest developments of these sewage wells.

And with the help of the TEKKON app, citizens managed to capture photos of all 10,500 wellheads in Tokyo's Shibuya district in just three days with their smartphones. If it continues at this speed, it will be possible to take photos of all 15 million cases. And maintain the infrastructure in a timely manner according to its latest developments. TEKKON estimates that such timely maintenance can reduce the investment in facility renewal by 30% to 40%.

In the long run, through the daily activities of TEKKON players, TEKKON will have various types of infrastructure data around the world. The data it collects will have beneficial value for infrastructure maintenance around the world.

In this simple economic model, how does TEKKON earn income to support the distribution of rewards to players?

The data obtained by TEKKON allows the infrastructure company to optimize its maintenance efficiency, so this data has value to the infrastructure company, and TEKKON sells it to the other party. The amount paid by the infrastructure company is the source of income for TEKKON.

To this end, they also made a rough calculation: there are about 7.9 billion people in the world, and the number of families is about 3 billion. Assuming that each household spends 50,000 yen per year on infrastructure-related expenses, the annual capital scale in this area is about 150 trillion yen. If 10% of this capital investment can be used to improve the efficiency of infrastructure maintenance by using TEKKON's wide-scale adoption in the future, the economic scale of about 15 trillion yen will be the potential upper limit of the economic system built by TEKKON.

But are TEKKON's expectations full of utopian fantasies from the very beginning? At current exchange rates, 50,000 yen is about $350. If such a scale of value input is used as a benchmark for estimation, is it an unrealistic idea for rich countries?

According to the United Nations, 10% of the world's population (700 million people) still lives in extreme poverty, living on less than US$1.90 a day. Even for those who are employed, 8% of employed workers and their families still live in extreme poverty.

And even in areas that are not poor, there are many areas where infrastructure investment is not sufficient. The benchmark for infrastructure spending per household may be too idealistic. Due to financial, policy, administrative procedures, judicial and other reasons, a large number of developing countries have the problem of shortage of infrastructure investment. TEKKON's theoretical maximum market size should ultimately be far from its estimate.

WEC Ecosystem

WEC is the native token of TEKKON. According to the official description, this ecosystem is composed of four parties: citizens, Whole Earth Foundation, infrastructure companies (or public institutions), and other companies.

WEC tokens were first issued on Ethereum and have been migrated to Solana since July 2022. Founded by former Qualcomm, Intel and Dropbox engineers at the end of 2017, Solana is a single-chain delegated proof-of-stake protocol that focuses on providing scalability without compromising decentralization or security. At the heart of Solana's scaling solution is a decentralized clock called Proof of History (PoH), designed to solve the problem of time in a distributed network without a single trusted source of time. By using a verifiable delay function, PoH allows each node to generate timestamps locally using SHA256 calculations. This eliminates the need to broadcast timestamps across the network, increasing overall network efficiency. SOL is the native token of the Solana blockchain. Solana uses a Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm to incentivize token holders to validate transactions. As part of Solana's secure design, all fees will be paid in SOL and burned, reducing the total supply. This deflationary SOL mechanism incentivizes more token holders to participate, thereby increasing network security. Check out more networks.

But its token economics design is different from common encryption projects. At the point of issuance, the total supply of WEC is fixed at 300 million. However, after migrating to Solana, it has been changed to a variable amount and is not clearly stated. “The exact amount will be determined by the foundation based on future usage of the platform, need to maintain business operations, and other factors,” the official said.

There is a wallet system embedded in the TEKKON app, but its design is relatively closed. The game designs points into two types: bonus points and bound points. Reward points can only be used for in-game consumption. If the user transfers them from the app to other EOA wallets, they will not be converted into WEC tokens. At present, the WEC has planned a pledge plan, but the specific rules are still under discussion.

Judging from its mechanism design, the model of this project is more closed and centralized. However, its unique real-world utility has indeed exerted the influence of "out of the circle", and it may be a new way of encrypting entrepreneurship. Where will TEKKON and WEC go in the future?