tune.fm launches new token protocol on Hedera Hashgraph
tune.fm has officially deployed to mainnet a new token protocol for Hedera Hashgraph. This new protocol utilizes an unprecedented sharding architecture that is necessary to scale token smart contracts on distributed public ledger provider Hedera Hashgraph. This represents an evolution of the ERC20 standard token protocol built for Ethereum since it adapts to and builds upon the unique architectural differences of the Hedera DLT versus Ethereum blockchain. Some of the advantages of Hedera over Ethereum are bank-grade security through its aBFT (asynchronous byzantine fault tolerant) consensus algorithm, lightning fast throughput speed, and minimal fees which are all possible utilizing a DAG (directed acyclic graph) architecture instead of the blockchain. Since the DAG differs from the blockchain in significant ways, the vanilla ERC20 standard smart contract is not sufficient to operate and scale tokens on Hedera Hashgraph. Thus tune.fm developed a new token protocol architecture for the JAM token to make it possible to scale token smart contracts on Hedera Hashgraph in a decentralized way. A token on Hedera offers unique advantages like finality and fairness for consensus ordering, fast transaction time and consensus speed necessary for dApps, and low fee structure making micropayments possible. The JAM token is specifically built for micropayments for every second of music streaming so when the music gets played the artist gets paid.
The JAM token is the cryptocurrency developed and used by tune.fm to allow listeners to support artists directly by simply streaming their music. Artists can earn JAM tokens as their music is streamed and they can also promote their music to first time listeners using JAM tokens to incentivize discovery. Fans can earn 100 JAM tokens for signing up and spend JAM by streaming music or earn additional JAM tokens for discovering promoted music. tune.fm is a decentralized application for music streaming developing a global music economy and decentralized marketplace for artists and fans. tune.fm features over 5K artists from around the world including grammy award winning artists from Mathew Knowles’s label Music World Entertainment featuring Beyonce live instrumentals. When the MWE catalog was first launched on tune.fm the surge in new signups caused the original smart contract to max out its state state size and not accept additional user wallets. This put the team back to the drawing board to re-architect the token smart contracts and develop a new protocol for scaling smart contract tokens on Hedera. The new architecture involves a ‘parent’ smart contract which wraps around various ‘child’ smart contract shards. As the state is filled for individual shards, new child shards are added to the parent smart contract, which intelligently maps and routes all incoming transactions to the relevant child shards.
This groundbreaking new token protocol architecture makes it possible to bring tokenization to Hedera the way ERC20 brought tokenization to Ethereum. With a much stronger technological foundation and compelling governance structure, Hedera can prove to be the more stable and scalable public distributed ledger technology that enables decentralized applications to scale and tokenize. With the new Hedera token protocol developed by tune.fm for the JAM token, decentralized tokens on Hedera are now possible and they solve a lot of the issues associated with Ethereum tokens involving speed, fees, security, and scalability. It is possible through widespread adoption that tokens on Hedera utilizing a similar sharding architecture could become the standard for future dApps looking to tokenize. tune.fm represents a critical use case for micropayments and cryptocurrency, allowing the JAM token to act as an ‘in-game currency’ for streaming micropayments as part of a novel ‘pay-as-you-go’ business model. Since payments happen seamlessly and automatically, micropayments allow the user to pay continuously for their real time usage of the application and compensate creators proportionally for their consumption of media.
As new payment technologies make way for new business models to be possible with micropayments and cryptocurrency, new platforms like tune.fm will transform how media is consumed in ways that are more fair to the creators and more engaging to consumers. New habits will form as tokenized economies organically spread and change the landscape with more efficient and rewarding means of media consumption. The JAM token and tune.fm represent an important part of this evolution from centralized media companies to decentralized media marketplaces that disintermediate the transitional media business models. Soon we will live in a world where global seamless value transfer is commonplace down the micro level of consuming data, media, or even listening to a song. Read about the full journey it took to develop the JAM token here.
