White Paper Will Explain, the Business Opportunities with the Agoora Token Are Much More Than Loyal- Ty Marketing As Such

Tokenizing User Participation Table of contents

Executive summary �� 5 Customer engagement: a history �� 7 The evolution of consumer engagement 7 Level 1 – Audience rating (how many people are tuned in?) 7 Level 2 – Social media “likes” (who likes me?) 8 Level 3 – Sentiment analysis (why do they love/hate me?) 9 why do they love / hate me? 9 Tokenizing user participation: the 4th level of engagement �� 11 Level 4 – Participation (Are you enough of a fan to publicly / emotionally / physically engage with my brand?) 12 A standard way of measuring and driving participation 12 Participation as a digital asset 13 Market opportunity 13 Agoora protocol presentation ��15 How it works? 15 Decentralized proofs & oracles 16 Oracles 17 Flexible and reliable set of proofs 17 Use Cases 23 Ethereum Smart Contract 27 Performance and scale considerations 27 Scaling up Ethereum 27 Alternative Platforms 28 Alternative platforms 29 Security and preventing bad actors 31 Agoora Labs �� 34 The power of Ethereum (ERC-20, 223, 721, 998, 1155) 34 The ERC-20 standard 34 The ERC-223 standard 34 The ERC-721 standard 34 The ERC-998 standard 34 The ERC-1155 standard 35 Technology watch 35 Bulletproof Smart Contract approach 35 The Agoora ecosystem �� 38 Exchanges 38 Agoora marketplace 38 Empowering stakeholders and rewarding participants 40 Vertical industries and applicability 40 A crypto democratization lever / enabler (Bring on the Killer App of crypto) 41 From a Stealth cryptocurrency wallet to a mainstream one 41 Agoora Tokenomics �� 43 A growth pool to support the ecosystem 44 Community building 45 Research and Development 45 Marketing 46 Partnerships 46 - p. 3

Roadmap & key milestones ��48 Team, Advisors and Partners ��50 Key team members 50 Advisor 51 Partners 51 Disclaimer ��55 Contact ��56 Executive summary Executive Summary - p. 5

Executive summary

Agoora is a blockchain-powered protocol token that generates decentralized proofs of participation, place, presence, and person in order to reward engagement by customers, fans, and users. Agoora does so by providing incentives for participation, with the economic benefits that result from it. With Agoora, we enable the tokenization of participation, something that is applicable in a plethora of everyday scenarios and cases and provides value in a range of industries and business activities, such as entertainment, gaming, consumer goods, financial services, travel, education, supply chain management, and many others. Agoora will provide brand marketers with entirely new means of interacting with customers, fans, and users, with authority backed by the Blockchain, something that was not previously possible.

Harnessing the power of the Ethereum distributed computing platform, the Agoora protocol unlocks and enables a 4th level of engagement, where a consumer uses a mobile device to take physical action that publicly demonstrates his or her commitment to a brand, message, or idea. With Agoora-powered applications, you are even creating muscle memory through physical movement, so this commitment is actually physically reinforced! (hence long-term engagement is being driven).

The Agoora protocol has been designed to fairly reward all participants in the ecosystem (i.e. users, contributors), with the enforced trust of the blockchain technology, something that we believe will drive increased acceptance and use of Agoora. Additionally, it has been designed to enable developers to build new applications that leverage our protocol of proofs of participation, place, presence, and person.

According to a 2011 report by McKinsey, “US companies spend US$50 billion a year on loyalty programs alone”. Since that time, companies have continued to increase the proportion of their marketing budget spent on loyalty, making the worldwide opportunity measurable in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually. However, as this white paper will explain, the business opportunities with the Agoora token are much more than loyalty marketing as such.

The components of the Agoora Protocol are designed to provide decentralized proofs of participation, place, presence, and, in some cases, person, with an option to conserve and protect an individual user’s privacy. In support of this effort, Agoora has developed significant intellectual property and has applied to patent that technology accordingly.

Agoora will conduct a crowd sale in Q1 2019 offering AGOORA tokens to investors during the launch of the platform. The AGOORA token generation event will be limited at 1,500,000,000 AGOORA tokens that will be distributed during the sale.

US COMPANIES SPEND AUS$50 YEAR ON LOYALTY BILLION PROGRAMS Customer engagement: a history Customer engagement: a history - p. 7

Customer engagement: a history

Customer engagement—and its measurement—has evolved significantly over the last 90 years, with most of that change occurring over the last 15 years. Mass media vehicles, such as radio and television, were initially measured on the basis of the audience rating, that is, a measure of the action of tuning in to or out of a radio or TV channel. Audience measures were calculated based on a theoretically representative sample of households that would maintain a journal of the radio or TV channels that they listened to, when, and for how long, and then data from the sample was used to extrapolate broader market share for stations and broadcast programs. (Newspapers had their circulation audited by an industry organ. Readers were asked about their ability to recall being exposed to specific ads.) Advertisers were invited to sponsor broadcasts based on these calcula- tions of market reach, which left much to be desired in terms of an actionable measure of customer sentiment or intent.

With the advent of the commercial Internet, there has been an evolution towards direct measures of customer interest, sentiment, and intent, each an aspect of engagement. Google introduced pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for its search engine, followed by the Google Display Network and display ad remarketing, which enabled advertisers to engage with consumers as they navigate the Internet as well as pay for advertising solely on the basis of interest and intent. With the arrival of social media and their advertising-infused news feeds, and the ability to like or share (Facebook), tweet or retweet (Twitter), or heart (Instagram) an item, consumers are able to publicly demonstrate their interest in a brand or a message with a simple mouse click or finger press. The result is that advertisers have access to hard data and, thus, meaningful measures of engagement based on real-world interactions. In addition, each social media platform also offers users the ability to post text, images, or videos to the network; these are rich sources of information about sentiment towards brands, politics, news events, or other issues.

The evolution of consumer engagement We recognize the evolution of consumer engagement across 3 distinct levels:

Level 1 – Audience rating (how many people are tuned in?)

The first level of consumer engagement is concerned with measuring the quantity of people being reached by mass media communications such as radio, TV, and newspapers, as a measure of the general population. It is essentially a passive measure.

The ancestor of measuring customer engagement is radio and TV ratings from The Niel- sen Company (formerly AC Nielsen): detailed analyses of consumer viewing behaviour are coupled with demographic information to provide brand marketers with a list of channels and programs that they can use to reach their target audience, a subset of the Customer engagement: a history - p. 8

general population. Audience rating measures answer questions such as: Which members of a household are watching which shows? And which programs do they all watch together? Which family characteristics, such as pet ownership, income, and education correlate with viewing choices? This depth of knowledge enables brand marketers, Niel- sen’s ultimate clients, to refine their campaigns based on demographics, time-of-day and week, and audience composition.

However, today’s programming content is viewed on more than just television sets, with the TV often running in the background during other activities, making traditional approaches to audience measurement difficult. (With over 70% of U.S. adults accessing a ‘second screen’ while watching TV, how much can you really infer from 15-minute blocks of TV ratings?) In fact, when they do watch TV, consumers are watching via the Internet and on mobile devices, in-home and out-of-home, live and time-shifted, free and paid, rebroadcast, and original programs. (Radio ratings are similarly affected by streaming and podcasts.) This makes it challenging to provide an accurate estimation of TV ratings, never mind how much viewers are engaged.

Level 2 – Social media “likes” (who likes me?)

In this second level of engagement, social media networks are used to increase the sense of community between fans/customers and a brand. Specific actions such as a like (Facebook, LinkedIn), a share (Facebook, LinkedIn), a tweet or retweet (Twitter), or a heart (Instagram) are taken to engage with a message post, image, or video. These engagements can be measured and tallied to provide brand marketers with a big picture view of customer engagement at a specific point in time, such as during an ad campaign, as well as the evolution of customer sentiment and intent over time. Compared to audience ratings, this is a much more active measure of engagement.

These social media networks can act as a touch point for a business to communicate more easily with its customers in a less formal context and, ultimately, get a better idea of who these people are and what they really want.

Before Facebook’s major changes to the algorithm a few years back, a ‘like’ was an indi- cation of how well a post performed with an audience. Posts with more ‘likes’ were sub- sequently exposed to larger audiences. The more ‘likes’ a post earned, the better for the post and the brand that created it.

However, organic content is virtually absent from the Facebook News Feed today. Due to Facebook’s modified algorithm and ever-increasing volume of posts, brands that don’t pay for ads have an increasingly difficult time appearing in their customers’ Facebook feeds. Opportunities for organic engagement on Facebook have largely disappeared. Businesses looking to grow their community now have to “pay to play”, regardless of the number of ‘likes’ a post or a page earns. In today’s Facebook, having more ‘likes’ no long- er ensures better future engagement. Customer engagement: a history - p. 9

Level 3 – Sentiment analysis (why do they love/hate me?)

In this third level of engagement, consumers take the time to publicly spell out and express their views and emotions on a range of topics, brands, ideas, and/or political positions, among others. (In the case of Twitter, they must do so using 280 characters or less.) With the ability to easily share a picture or a video, consumers invest more of their passion into submitting a piece of user-generated content than into liking a brand page’s status update. Whereas social media platforms do a great job of measuring actions such as clicks and providing meaningful statistics in the aggregate, they fail to capture the full story because they lack the ability to understand context. Too often, they tell us the ‘what’ but not the ‘why’ or the ‘how.’

This is where sentiment analysis, which leverages artificial intelligence techniques such as natural language processing and computer vision, comes into play. Sentiment analysis looks at the quantity and frequency with which words including phrases and hashtags—and now emoji—are used in the context of a brand. It also looks at the facial expressions of people appearing images as well as the presence of the branded product itself. These are all scored and converted into meaningful metrics.

An active measure in its own right, sentiment analysis is essentially a metric that adds context to other metrics. It’s especially important to get as much context as possible around online mentions. Yes, it’s important to know how much people are talking about your brand, but you also need to know how they are talking about you (i.e., in what way). Is it glowing praise? Bashing rants? Utter indifference?

Other metrics may tell you what people are talking about, but sentiment shows you the gist of what they’re saying, which is the value that marketers seek in understanding engagement with their audience.

Is there a better way to precisely measure brand engagement? Tokenizing user participation: the 4th level of engagement Tokenizing user participation: the 4th level of engagement - p. 11

Tokenizing user participation: the 4th level of engagement

As products become more and more commoditized and companies try to outperform their competitors, a better and more intimate customer experience is becoming an increasingly important way of differentiating a brand in the marketplace. Customer engagement plays a key role in the overall customer experience. While there has yet to be a standard, accepted definition of customer engagement, noted consumer marketer Richard Sedley defines it as, “repeated interactions that strengthen the emotional, psychological or physical investment a customer has in a brand.”

Customer engagement is essentially a measure of relationship strength. Fostering and measuring customer engagement is therefore a key objective, at the heart of every marketing initiative and management system. However, measuring a concept that is in people’s heads and hearts is extremely hard to do. Surveys can only provide information up until a certain point and they are subjective measures at best. When it comes to the actual moment of demonstrating loyalty to the brand, for example, a purchase, emotions take over and rationality goes out the window.

Nowadays, thanks to the Internet and social media, companies and brands have the opportunity to connect with thousands or even millions of people in real time, enabling them to measure customer engagement in real-time. However, not all user interactions with brands take place on social media or the broader Internet. In fact, the vast majority of them take place in the physical world, where precise measurement and meaningful results continue to be a challenge. In addition, a significant portion of time is now spent in immersive online 3D worlds, the realm of video games (e.g., Fortnite), virtual reality, and other simulations. This brings us to the 4th level of engagement: participation.

Figure 1: Historical evolution of customer / fan / user engagement measurement Tokenizing user participation: the 4th level of engagement - p. 12

Level 4 – Participation (Are you enough of a fan to publicly / emotionally / physically engage with my brand?) The 4th level of engagement is about customer / fan / user participation or interaction with your brand in the real world as well as the virtual world. For example, during a live event or any place public where a customer / fan / user can put your brand and their passion for it in front of others. This engagement occurs through the deployment of a branded item or the performance of a physical / tangible / measurable activity in a public venue (physical or virtual)). Example activities include:

• Wearing a branded piece of clothing / accessory • Cheering for the team • Raising a banner • Shaking a smartphone • Showing your “colors” • Singing along • Etc.

The 4th level of engagement has four highly desirable characteristics over and above the aspects of the other levels of engagement that we have considered to date. They are:

1. Directly witnessed by others, which leads to influence and virality 2. Demonstrates and forms group / tribal belonging 3. Is physiologically self-reinforcing (i.e., drives muscle memory) 4. Is objectively measurable

A standard way of measuring and driving participation With the ability to capture participation in real and virtual worlds, marketers could measure engagement to a degree never before achieved. With the ability to incentivize participation to achieve specific outcomes, they can drive engagement more effectively than any existing loyalty program could ever hope to do. As a result, they could target their brand investments more effectively than ever, ensuring that marketing spending occurs where it can provide the most bang for the buck. However, what has been lacking—until now—to make this vision a reality is a simple, standardized mechanism by which to both capture and stimulate participation in all real-world situations and virtual world activities.

This mechanism is the blockchain. As an open, distributed, verifiable ledger that can record activities in both the real and the virtual worlds, the blockchain provides the means by which participation can both be captured—and stimulated. While each instance of participation can be captured and recorded in the blockchain’s immutable ledger, the blockchain also offers the ability, through tokens, to incentivize active participation by customers / fans / users, specifically, through targeted forms of interaction with a brand in the real and/or virtual worlds. Tokenizing user participation: the 4th level of engagement - p. 13

Participation as a digital asset In the 21st century Attention Economy, Participation is the next digital asset to be tokenized. Think of it as a “Basic Attention Token (BAT) for live events” and other interactive scenarios.

Virtually any engagement-focused application can benefit from instantaneous access to a credible proof of customer / fan / user participation: the 4th level of engagement. Now there is a way to do just that, using a participation token and the decentralized secure ledger offered by the blockchain.

Market opportunity With Agoora we seek to revolutionize the economics of customer engagement, and by extension, loyalty programs. Deloitte’s own research on customer loyalty rewards programs pointed out that blockchain technology, as a ‘trustless’ distributed ledger, intro- duces a powerful, disruptive way to revitalize the existing framework of loyalty programs through its potential to streamline execution of rewards in an almost real-time, transparent, and cost-effective way.

Establishing a kind of loyalty mechanism for users’ participation using Blockchain technology allows for the instantaneous creation of reward tokens that can be redeemed or exchanged in a fast, secure, and transparent way across multiple platforms and exchanges, and even between users and entertainers, all through a ‘trustless’ environment operating without intermediaries.

In 2011, McKinsey reported that US companies spent a cumulative US$50 billion a year on loyalty programs; the outstanding balance of rewards is estimated at 10 times that amount. Over the following 7 years, companies have continued to increase their marketing spending on loyalty programs, making the worldwide opportunity measurable in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually. In addition, according to the Boston Consulting Group, the average American household is registered in an average of 22 loyalty programs, but actively participates in only half. In 2015, research firm Colloquy found that “active use of these programs has steadily declined since 2010 at a rate of 2 to 3 percent per year.” There is therefore an opportunity with Agoora to increase the effectiveness of engagement with the 50% of loyalty programs that aren’t being actively used as well as to reinvigorate the 50% of programs that are actively used.

However, the business opportunities with the Agoora protocol token are much more than loyalty marketing as such. Agoora protocol presentation Agoora protocol presentation - p. 15

Agoora protocol presentation

How it works? The various participants needed for a typical Agoora interaction all require a compliant mobile application installed on their smartphones. For example, in a live professional sporting event, the people lifting their devices in a sponsored show of support of their team would be rewarded with our participation token for doing so. The sponsor that wished to enable this interaction/participation unit/space would have purchased in ad- vance the tokens necessary for this transaction to occur, on our marketplace, and the venue itself would likely have gotten a slice of this transaction.

In this scenario it is also possible for crowd-initiated interaction to occur, where event attendees can be the originators of a crowd interaction by using Agoora tokens that are already in their possession, having acquired them by being a witness, having received some from previous event-interaction participation, or having purchased them outright in the marketplace. Agoora tokens earned in one application may be used and/or redeemed in other supporting applications. If you earned tokens during an event, you can use the tokens you earned in another event, supported by the ecosystem.

The Agoora platform is directly applicable to other scenarios/use cases with the same tenets and the aforementioned proofs. Application vendors could create a corporate and shareholder governance application that uses Agoora for proof of presence and person, to prove that participants are who they say they are and that they have the right to vote. The vote itself is a form of participation, with all operations, including bylaws and board resolutions, recorded on the blockchain, to be executed by a smart contract for company operations.

Our platform provides APIs and services that enable various scenarios to be implemented by 3rd party applications and eventually ÐApps using our embeddable SDKs and leveraging our guidance.

Figure 2: Conceptual view of the Agoora platform Agoora protocol presentation - p. 16

Figure 3: High level technical view

Decentralized proofs & oracles The Agoora protocol is a set of subsystems, routines, and smart contracts cooperating to manufacture decentralized proofs of Participation, Place, Presence and Person on the blockchain, leveraging the power of Ethereum.

The rise of smartphone technological capabilities (sensors such as fingerprint and facial scanners, cameras, GPS, etc.; processing power; connectivity including near-field communication (NFC) and networking; etc.) in conjunction with even more connected and resilient networks, offers a vast range of possibilities that the Agoora protocol will leverage to produce decentralized proofs.

At the international level, we are seeing a trend in the public space where cities are also competing in their digital transformation. Cities across the globe are deploying technologies to make the urban environment of the future better, more intelligent, more immersive, more secure, more ecofriendly, more efficient, and more attractive.This massive technology deployment is not only happening with the largest cities but is true as well with medium and smaller sized cities.

The digitalization journey is also impacting venues of all types. From connected airports and malls to stadiums and concert halls, venues are more and more equipped and eager to remain up to date with the latest technologies (e.g., access points, beacons, aug- mented reality (AR), apps and virtual assistants, etc.). Agoora protocol presentation - p. 17

The Agoora protocol will leverage all available data sources, from smartphones and wearables, smart cities, and smart venues, paired with the power of smart contracts to produce the requested decentralized proofs.

Oracles

To improve the results of the decentralized proof determination, we are building partnerships with external data providers that provide the context required for meaningful interactions. For example, the price of a stock, the score at a basketball game, or the status of a payment. These third-party, trusted sources are commonly known as ‘oracles’ in blockchain parlance. Oracles provide the necessary input data for our smart contracts to execute when the terms of the contract are met. When involved in the proving process, oracles will become a distinct data feed in the proof-scoring mechanism. Oracles will be rewarded for the effort or service provided.

Flexible and reliable set of proofs

The Agoora protocol is built to be flexible enough to handle a variety of complex scenarios. The Agoora protocol proving-process follows a sequence that will ultimately lead to establishing Proof-of-Participation:

1. Proof-of-Person uniquely identifies a user; it can be mandatory or optional depending on the type of event, the expected engagement level, and/or the reward value 2. Proof-of-Place determines whether the user is in a certain venue or not 3. Proof-of-Presence determines whether the user is effectively attending an event or not (physical or virtual) 4. Proof-of-Participation determines whether the user has physically participated in an event—interacting with or reacting to a specific interaction request during the event.

Figure 4: Recorded proofs

The Agoora protocol is highly customizable enabling developers to build complex scenarios depending on a set of proofs. For instance, an anonymous scenario could require determining the Place, Presence, and Participation, but not the Person. Another scenario could see the determination of the Person, Place, Presence, and Participation with the Proof-of-Person being mandatory for a specific reason. Agoora protocol presentation - p. 18

Moreover, the reward mechanism is highly customizable depending upon the event objectives. This opens up a brand-new opportunity for participation / incentive marketing. Decentralized proof-of-participation

THE PROBLEM

One issue that is shared by marketing and sales teams is that it is extremely hard to engage prospects, users, fans, or even clients, to naturally and genuinely participate in a sponsored event. How can we define user participation? Agoora defines user participation as a physical motion and/or gesture that follows a trigger. As mentioned in the earlier sub-sections, the Proof-of-Place and Proof-of-Presence are not enough to determine whether a user has participated or not.

We developed a revolutionary approach that fosters natural, ongoing user participation in an event.

SOLUTION DESIGN

The Agoora decentralized Proof-of-Participation is a revolutionary patented1 approach resulting from five years of research and development. With Agoora, user participation can be accurately determined based on a motion and/or gesture of the user that has been captured by nearby sensors. The sensors used can be those of the user’s smartphone, wearables (i.e., any IoT tracker such as Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Watch), on-site sensors (including cameras, beacons, Li-Fi, …), or any other nearby devices. The participation is deduced after processing a combination of parameters, for instance, the time- frame, the motion intensity, the motion trigger, etc.

POTENTIAL PARTNERSHIPS

Not applicable, since the Agoora Proof-of-Participation is a unique, patented technology

Figure 5: Proof-of-Participation mechanism

1Patent: US9887791, Applications: US15/853,214, CAN2,924,837 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9887791B2/en?oq=US9887791 Agoora protocol presentation - p. 19

Decentralized proof-of-person

THE PROBLEM

Agoora can determine the Proof-of-Person, which is different from Proof-of-Identifica- tion that can be understood as a user’s authentication. User authentication uses an ID and a secret password validated by a central authority to enable access to centralized systems and to be able to track activity of users on these same systems. The method has since moved from centralized authentication to federated authentication to reinforce overall security. However, some security drawbacks remain when, for instance, someone uses the ID/password to be authenticated as another user, with or with the authorization of that user.

SOLUTION DESIGN

The Agoora Proof-of-Person is decentralized and considers different sources that match the biometric characteristics of a person with their own private wallet(s). The Proof-of- Person has the advantage that this method of verification can’t be stolen. Even if a user device that contains the personal wallet’s private key is stolen, the user can regenerate the wallet anytime using the wallet’s seed backup.

Current approaches to Proof-of-Person address the problem by using users’ biometrics coupled with artificial intelligence (e.g., fingerprints, facial recognition, or any other unique biometric data).

The Agoora decentralized Proof-of-Person is the authentication of a person by multiple witnesses or oracles that will produce the evidence via a Proof-of-Work-like consensus. The authenticated person could be associated with n wallets and devices. The Agoora protocol would allow for the participation of anonymous participants (i.e., a non-authenticated and non-identified person). That being said, the Proof-of-Person could be set as optional for establishing a Proof-of-Participation (for anonymous use cases).

In the case of non-anonymous participation, the Proof-of-Person is the basis for the Proof-of-Participation. We assume that if the person is authenticated as being present and is associated with a device, subsequent interactions will show the associated device attributed to the same person.

Based on the definition and the requirements of the event, the event sponsor will define the level of accuracy or confidence needed to accept the evidence that will be reflected in the event’s smart contract. For instance, in the case of a national voting application, the Proof-of-Person certainty should be very high. However, for entertainment applications, or any applications where users’ privacy could be a concern, the Proof-of-Person might be omitted.

We consider using multiple factors to validate the person, starting from self-authentication with a secret to a plurality of witnesses potentially capturing the face, voice, rate of heart beat, retina, fingerprint, etc., or calling upon numerous external oracles. Agoora protocol presentation - p. 20

PARTNERSHIPS

There are some recent initiatives that seek to address the basic scenario described in Proof-of-Person that can be integrated with the Agoora protocol. As an example, the Biometrids project (https://biometrids.io) is working to implement a decentralized and anonymous ID by facial recognition stored on the Blockchain.

Other ambitious projects such as Civic (https://www.civic.com) and Uport (https://uport. me) are also attempting to solve the problem.

Figure 6: Proof of person mechanism Decentralized proof-of-place

THE PROBLEM

Location-based mobile social network services are popular nowadays and their methods for obtaining end users’ location information are essentially based on people’s self-reported location claims, using mobile devices to check position (via GPS) and sending them back to the service providers. However, this mechanism has serious vulnerabilities that enable malicious users to access restricted resources or services by transmitting fake location information. Indeed, GPS can be spoofed, since it typically only works out- doors and usually reports information at fixed intervals (e.g., every 5 to 10 minutes). Both academic and industrial researchers have been aware of this problem since location-related mobile social network services were first commercialized.

Different Proof-of-Place or Proof-of-Location approaches have been proposed over the last few years, being either infrastructure-dependent (e.g., relying on installed Wi-Fi access points, Bluetooth beacons, etc.) or infrastructure-independent (i.e., ad hoc peer- to-peer (P2P) networks). However most of the currently proposed Proof-of-Place mechanisms remain centralized (i.e., they rely on centralized servers for storing proofs or on centralized infrastructure (i.e. Bluetooth Beacons)). Agoora protocol presentation - p. 21

To ensure that the Agoora decentralized Proof-of-Place works properly, it is necessary that the geographic locations claimed by users are always truthful. For example, a company may allow customers in a specific area to get a discount coupon, and for that it will require that users cannot indicate a false location to avoid granting coupons to those who have no right to obtain them.

➤➤ In the Agoora context, a Proof-of-Place is a digital certificate (that can be anonymous) that is stored on the blockchain, attesting to someone’s physical presence at a certain geographic location and at a certain time.

SOLUTION DESIGN

When required, users’ smartphones will be able to act as witnesses for each other’s locations using short-range communication methods such as Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi, NFC, sound, ultrasound, or camera. Typically, participating smartphones that are connected to the internet (via cellular or Wi-Fi) and are located in the same area will automatically create a peer-to-peer network using short-range network interfaces such as the Blue- tooth interface. Then the interconnected devices can interact and randomly elect a node. The elected node will then gather network user evidence from the network witnesses to issue the Proof-of-Place for each participating user. The proof determination is performed without any user involvement or manual intervention. Users’ contributions (nodes & witnesses) in verifying other’s place claims will be rewarded with Agoora tokens. Optimized Proof-of-Place

We also are working on a promising technology/mechanism that will enable developers to accurately determine the relative position of users in attendance with one another in a venue. This will offer a vast range of possibilities for new visual and/or audio effects, resulting in even more impactful and immersive participation experiences.

POTENTIAL PARTNERSHIPS

To provide the best quality of service in delivering the decentralized Proof-of-Place, we plan to establish partnerships with other service providers. With a plurality of incoming data sources, we will be able to enhance our service offering (i.e., accuracy, response time, etc.).

The following projects (not a complete list) could be integrated to provide ad hoc Proof- of-Place oracles:

• FOAM (https://www.foam.space); • Platin (https://platin.io); • Unico (https://www.unico.global); • XYO Network (https://www.xyo.network). Agoora protocol presentation - p. 22

Figure 7: Proof-of-Place mechanism Decentralized Proof-of-Presence

THE PROBLEM

Some services require a Proof-of-Presence of their users. The user’s presence is when you can ensure—with a very high level of confidence and trust—that a user attended a specific event. It can be a prerequisite for a provider to deliver the service, product, or reward.

The notion of user attendance should be clarified to avoid further confusion.

➤➤ In determining user’s Proof-of-Presence, the Agoora protocol will clearly establish that a user attended the specified event, knowing that the event can be either broadcast live on a TV screen or on the radio, or even re-broadcast at a later time.

A Proof-of-Presence based on GPS data has a few drawbacks, as mentioned earlier in the Proof-of-Place section, and it also has limitations such as, for instance, determining whether a user attended an event remotely.

The Agoora Proof-of-Presence has a broad range of applications such as validating the presence of personnel or staff at a townhall, or students attending a lecture, etc. The potential value of knowing whether employees, participants, or basic users attended an exhibition can be economically crucial and potentially enable new business models. Agoora protocol presentation - p. 23

SOLUTION DESIGN

➤➤ The Agoora decentralized Proof-of-Presence determines whether a user attended an event or not (either by being physically present at the event, or by attending remotely it in real time or in play back mode).

The Proof-of-Presence will rely on the user’s smartphone’s ability to use onboard sensors to capture nearby data and then will use the Agoora protocol to determine the presence of the requesting user. Potential partnerships:

• Sikorka (http://sikorka.io); • Mytag (https://home.mytag.io/proof-of-presence/).

Figure 8: Proof-of-Presence mechanism

Use Cases Use case #1: A soccer club is playing in a stadium

THE MATCH IS BROADCAST ON BOTH The Agoora protocol will be able to accurately TV AND RADIO. A FAMOUS BRAND determine, for each user, whether: OF BEER IS SPONSORING THE EVENT • He / she was in the stadium, in a AND WANTS TO REWARD EACH broadcasting venue, or any combination FAN THAT WILL PERFORM “CROWD of them (Proof-of-Place) WAVES” DURING THE VIDEO AND RADIO BRAND ADVERTISEMENT. • He / she was effectively watching or THE BEER BRAND BROADCASTS listening to the match, even after the ADVERTISEMENTS ON DIFFERENT fact (Proof-of-Presence) CHANNELS SUCH AS RADIO AND • He / she participated in the “crowd TV; THE ADVERTISEMENT IS PLAYED waves” (Proof-of-Participation) RANDOMLY IN THE STADIUM. The Agoora smart contract will then process The participation can be anonymous. How- the captured proofs and will mint/assign a ever, for those who also opt in to include defined reward amount expressed in Agoora their Proof-of-Person, they will receive a tokens (or any other ERC-20, ERC-223, unique digital collectible card (ERC-721) — ERC-721, ERC-998, ERC-1155 compliant like the famous Panini cards that sport fans tokens) to be allocated to the users as a used to collect and trade. function of their level of engagement.

In this case we can have 4 distinct types of The beer brand fans that participated in participating users: some of the social engagement tasks will be automatically credited with promised tokens 1. Users physically in the stadium as a reward. The smart contract will be able 2. Users who are in a broadcast venue to allocate different reward amounts to (i.e., a bar, community area, etc.) individual users depending upon the collected proofs, and the degree of each 3. Users who are neither in the stadium user’s participation. nor in a broadcast venue (e.g., could be at home, on public transport, etc.) 4. Users who watched a re-run of the match at a later time

We estimate that the Agoora platform will have to support and process roughly 100 million proofs per week for this use case, reflecting the participation in major sporting events.

Note: this also applies to concerts, conferences, or any public or private exhibitions. We also anticipate traction for spontaneous events with the increasing use of social live event streaming (e.g., Facebook live, Snapchat stories). Use case #2: Corporate shareholders assembly

A LISTED COMPANY HAS ITS voting application can be used to follow the ANNUAL PLENARY SHAREHOLDERS agenda and will provide a platform for par- ASSEMBLY AT THE COMPANY’S HEAD ticipating in the voting and will immutably OFFICE AND WANTS A MAXIMUM OF register the votes. SHAREHOLDERS TO VOTE ON THE COMPANY’S SENIOR MANAGEMENT The Agoora protocol, combined with a Smart PROPOSALS. TO ENABLE THE MAX- Contract, will be able to accurately deter- IMUM NUMBER OF SHAREHOLD- mine for each voter whether: ERS TO VOTE, THE SHAREHOLDER’S • He / she was eligible to participate in the PHYSICAL PRESENCE IS NOT MAN- vote (Proof-of-Person) DATORY, HOWEVER THE PROOF-OF- • He / she was attending the assembly PERSON AND PROOF-OF-PLACE ARE in-person or not (Proof-of-Place) REQUIRED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE VOTING. • He / she was effectively watching or listening to the assembly (Proof-of- For the shareholders that cannot be at the Presence) meeting in-person, the assembly is broad- • He / she participated in the votes when cast on the company’s website. For all requested (Proof-of-Participation) meeting participants, the company’s regular mobile application or the Agoora

The Agoora protocol will tally all the votes and, once the electoral officer closes the ballot, the results can be presented instantly. The voting process can be audited as well as all of the proofs can be reviewed on the blockchain. Use case #3: Enable engagement leveraging Geo-fencing & Geo-targeting techniques.

AN ANONYMOUS USER IS EATING Geo-targeting refers to displaying ads to HIS LUNCH IN A SHOPPING MALL’S people who meet specific ‘targeting’ criteria FOOD COURT. WHILE EATING, HE IS in addition to being in a geo-fenced area. WATCHING YOUTUBE VIDEOS. YOU- The key difference with geo-fencing is that TUBE WILL DISPLAY RELEVANT ADS geo-targeting considers much more data BASED ON THE USER’S LOCATION (e.g., demographics, interests, behaviors, AND OTHER CRITERIA. etc.) to be able to display the most relevant ads. Geo-fencing refers to the drawing of a virtual fence around a physical location. When In the near future we could see geo- some people are in a geo-fenced area, ads targeted prospects (Proof-of-Place and related to the area will be displayed on Proof-of-Presence) that would receive extra users’ devices. discounts or a customized brand journey for those who came and interacted with an on-site animation or sale (Proof-of- Participation).

We believe that the Agoora protocol will be a marketing game changer allowing new scenarios that enable marketers to not only attract valuable prospects to visit areas but also introducing / providing a genuine engagement aspect with the Proof-of-Participation. Agoora protocol presentation - p. 27

Ethereum Smart Contract To build a truly decentralized proofs platform, we selected the most accepted and used smart contract Blockchain platform, the Ethereum network. Ethereum is still in active development, with new features (e.g., scalability, privacy, interoperability, etc.) being added to it all the time.

The ERC-20 standard for fungible tokens was released on Ethereum and is now a wide- ly-supported standard, with the benefit that it will enable market participants to easily acquire or exchange the Agoora tokens needed to manufacture proofs.

Since the logic defined in a smart contract is immutable after its deployment on the Ethereum network, smart contracts will be extensively reviewed by independent auditors to ensure that they can securely maintain a consistent set of rules and data and enable market participants to trust the fairness of the platform and the protocol.

Performance and scale considerations Even as Blockchain’s reach continues to expand, the technology remains held back by limitations that are largely the result of its creation. Despite its immense potential for decentralization and disintermediation of many services and systems, Blockchain solutions remain largely theoretical due to both technical and cost-related restrictions. The problem for most cryptocurrency and Blockchain-based applications is that decentralized networks, while reducing the hardware costs for companies developing them, increase the cost of maintenance. Furthermore, scaling is significantly harder due to the intense resource requirements (i.e., CPU, disk space) of hosting an ever-expanding distributed ledger on every node.

With hundreds and even thousands of events per day, each involving potentially thousands of participants, a simple calculation shows that our Agoora Participation Eco- system of Applications will be required to clear millions of proofs per day. Because of a hard-coded limit on computations per block, the Ethereum blockchain currently supports roughly 7-15 transactions per second which translates into a maximum of a million transactions a day to serve the needs of the overall Ethereum community.

Scaling up Ethereum

The core limitation is that public blockchains like Ethereum require every transaction to be processed by every single node in the network. Every operation that takes place on the Ethereum blockchain — a payment, the birth of a CryptoKitty, the deployment of a new ERC-20 contract — must be performed by every single node in the network in par- allel. This is by design; it’s part of what makes public blockchains authoritative. Nodes don’t have to rely on someone else to tell them what the current state of the blockchain is — they figure it out for themselves. Agoora protocol presentation - p. 28

Ethereum was introduced to much fanfare, as it set the stage for the development of distributed applications (ĐApps) and offered, in theory, a more stable version of Bitcoin’s restrictive blockchain and consensus methods. However, the Ethereum chain has also run into scalability issues (which came to the surface thanks to the “CryptoKitties” fias- co), a challenge that even Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, has admitted exists. One of the solutions he has come up with, however, could be a game-changer for the Ethereum blockchain’s overall scalability.

“Plasma” is a technology that allows users to create “child” blockchains that branch off from the main Ethereum chain. This removes much of the stress that currently congests the rate of transactions on Ethereum. The biggest problem for scaling is that, as the demand for transactions increases, when more users join the chain, the costs (i.e., resource and financial) of maintaining the chain also grow exponentially.

By allowing users to create micro-chains that host specific transactions, Plasma can remove a large source of strain on the network while concurrently making it easier to scale Ethereum for greater real-world applications. Plasma is being designed to stack on top of Ethereum and to work alongside other new technologies (such as “sharding”) that also work to improve scaling.

Scalability of distributed networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are well behind where they need to be, even for simple applications like payment networks. But since the promises of Blockchain technology go way beyond just payments, everything from decentralized social networks to video games are being developed to run on Blockchain infrastructure. Agoora protocol presentation - p. 29

Alternative platforms

While we believe that the Ethereum platform is most suitable for the development and deployment of the Agoora platform, we continue to monitor developments in the blockchain space, particularly with regard to processing volumes and speed. We have identified a number of organizations that are working to improve existing blockchains, while others are looking to leapfrog blockchain technology altogether. These organizations include:

EOS BLOCKCHAIN (https://eos.io)

EOS has already been hailed for its scalable ecosystem for ĐApps development, its creative design, and its disconnect from the major Bitcoin and Ethereum chains. Instead of building a blockchain on which applications can be launched and hosted, the EOS.io team built something more akin to an operating system that lets users piece together their own ĐApps and blockchains using a system-wide uni- versal template. The beauty of it is that the technology that underpins it is built specifically to deal with the biggest issues limiting scalability: transaction speeds and the number of transactions that the system can process.

ZILLIQA BLOCKCHAIN (https://www.zilliqa.com/)

One of the more exciting developments in today’s Blockchain field is the introduction of “sharding” as a possible solution to the scaling hur- dle. “Sharding” involves breaking down large sets of data into smaller “shards” that can be processed independently and then regrouped to form the original set when needed. Initially conceived for the Ethereum blockchain, the model is still at least a few years away from full imple- mentation. However, Zilliqa has taken the lead on that front and has already released a version of its infrastructure that has shown tremen- dous potential for scalability and ĐApps development.

QUARKCHAIN BLOCKCHAIN (https://quarkchain.io)

Transactions Per Second (TPS) has become an important metric in the Blockchain scalability conversation, and few companies have stepped up to make as bold a claim as QuarkChain. The company estimates that once fully operational, its proprietary network should be able to scale up to a whopping 1 million transactions per second, a capability that is several orders of magnitude higher than Bitcoin and Ethereum, and even above the Visa payment network’s capacity of approximately 65,000 TPS. Agoora protocol presentation - p. 30

NEO BLOCKCHAIN (https://neo.org/)

NEO is a non-profit community-driven blockchain project. It utilizes blockchain technology and digital identity to digitize assets and auto- mate the management of digital assets using smart contracts. Using a distributed network, it aims to create a “Smart Economy”.

NEO was founded in 2014 and was open sourced on GitHub in June 2015. NEO has stated that community development is its top priority. NEO has a huge developer community around the world, such as CoZ, NEL, and NeoResearch, who continuously contribute to NEO’s development. Mil- lions of community members are active on Reddit, Discord, Github, and Twitter.

MAGNACHAIN (https://magnachain.co)

MagnaChain aims to provide revolutionary solutions for these problems by allowing developers to create games for the blockchain even if they are not fluent in Blockchain-specific coding languages. MagnaChain will facilitate this by providing numerous Software Development Kits (SDKs) to translate games from popular coding languages such as Lua so that they can run on the blockchain. This means developers will be able to release full games with ease and even bring their existing games to the MagnaChain platform.

Similar to highly regarded public blockchains like Ethereum, Mag- naChain is supposed to allow for virtually limitless applications and tokenized ecosystems to be built on its platform. These ecosystems could include existing games that have been re-configured to run on the blockchain, new games built exclusively to run on MagnaChain, third- party exchanges for digital assets, and third-party marketplaces.

LOOM NETWORK (https://loomx.io)

Loom Network is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that is live in production. It is a network of Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) sidechains, which allow for highly-scalable games and user-facing Đapps while still being backed by the security of Ethereum.

Dubbed “EOS on Ethereum”, Loom’s DPoS sidechains provide the same high scalability and throughput promised by alternative platforms like EOS, while still being fully Ethereum-compatible and secure. Agoora protocol presentation - p. 31

Security and preventing bad actors The security and reliability of the Agoora protocol is fundamental and it is critical for us to make sure that the ecosystem remains fair and immune from cheating actors or mis- behaving users. The protocol will embed security routines that have two main features: to protect the network from bad actors and to ensure that the service remains available and reliable.

➤➤ The security and fairness of the Agoora ecosystem is an important element for us as trust is tied to our protocol. We also believe that maintaining a high level of trust within our ecosystem will have a direct impact on the short-term and long- term economics of our value proposition.

Protocol security is a great concern for Agoora and we will make sure to remain at the forefront of cyber and non-security practices. As such, we have identified the following security cases (among many others):

CHEATING GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION (OWN AND ANOTHER PEER’S PLACE)

A peer could declare an untruthful geographic location to obtain a false Proof-of-Place. Our network topology prevents this kind of situation, since each peer that receives a Proof-of-Place request or response verifies that the specified geographic location is not farther than the maximum distance covered by the short-range communication technology. Moreover, if a peer keeps trying to cheat the network, the network will protect itself by banning the peer attempting to disrupt the service.

REPLAYING ERRONEOUS PROOFS-OF-PLACE (‘POISON THE WELL ATTACKS’)

This type of attack occurs when a malfunctioning or malicious party creates and injects corrupted data into the network, which decreases the overall accuracy of the processing or proofs generated by the system.

An outdated Proof-of-Place could be re-broadcast over the network by malicious peers, with the purpose of minting the Proof-of-Place of other peers. Since every peer of the network checks that the Proof-of-Place is coherent in the layer 2 blockchain before re- laying it, this attack won’t work. Moreover, every minted Proof-of-Place contains a refer- ence to a block of the blockchain. In the case where the referenced block is older than the latest blocks of the blockchain, the block will be immediately discarded/rejected. Agoora protocol presentation - p. 32

COLLUDING WITH OTHER PEERS

A case to consider is when two or more malicious peers collude together to generate false proofs (also known as a Sybil attack). For instance, a malicious peer, with the help of another malicious peer, tries to prove itself in a geographic location that is not its real one. The two peers agree to declare a wrong Proof-of-Place attesting that their geographic locations are different from the real ones. Then, they broadcast the untruthful Proofs-of-Place over the network.

In most cases, colluding peers can be detected by honest nearby peers and the consensus mechanism. Once detected, their contribution will be disregarded, and they could be banned.

DETERMINING REAL IDENTITIES OF PEERS

An attacker could attempt to determine by deduction the real identity of network peers through full observation of Proof-of-Place in the blockchain. Similar to Bitcoin, users can have multiple wallets and they are free to use any of their compatible wallets when participating. As demonstrated in Zhu and Cao’s paper (“Toward Privacy Preserving and Collusion Resistance in a Location Proof Updating System”), if a peer can have and use multiple wallets (i.e., different unique identifiers), it becomes extremely difficult to determine the underlying user’s identity. Also, the Agoora blockchain will never store users’ identity data.

DENIAL OF SERVICE (DOS) AND DISTRIBUTED DENIAL OF SERVICE (DDOS) ATTACKS

Both Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks occur when malicious or dysfunctional actors submerge the network with huge volumes of network requests, usually causing a local, regional, or even a system-wide outage.

Due to the distributed nature of the Agoora protocol and the design of the infrastructure, the network will remain functional despite an attempted Denial of Service Attack. As DoS or DDoS attacks require significant computing power and physical access to disturb an ongoing event, targeting even a small portion of the Agoora protocol is expensive and economically illogical and discouraging.

SECURITY AND PLATFORM ROBUSTNESS

With almost a new breach or exploit disclosed every day, hacking technics and cyber- attacks are common topics these days. The MtGox hack was the very first and biggest heist the crypto world had to deal with; the impact was deep, with effects beyond the crypto community. At Agoora we believe that cyber pressure will increase steadily in the coming years and the threat might effectively terminate those players that are un- prepared. To sharpen our countermeasure techniques, we will remain mobilized and will use the latest innovations (e.g., machine learning and AI) in combination with legacy hacking approaches (i.e., honeypot, IDS) resulting in a solid and adaptive security framework. Agoora Labs Agoora Labs - p. 34

Agoora Labs

Agoora Labs’ mission is to assess the technologies that we could consider as potentially useful for our ecosystem, test them via proofs of concept, and protect them when possible with patents. Agoora Labs’ current focus is on usability, security, interoperability, and scalability. These considerations can change given that the technological landscape is moving fast. We will also be working on building our own blockchain infrastructure to suit our technological needs.

The power of Ethereum (ERC-20, 223, 721, 998, 1155) While our solution design already leverages the popular ERC-20 and ERC-721 standards, in the near future we plan on enhancing our solution using some of the very latest cut- ting-edge standards proposed by the community, such as ERC-223, 998, 1155.

The ERC-20 standard

ERC-20 is the most common token on the Ethereum network. These are the well-known tokens, such as GNT, BAT, or REP. They can be distributed among any addresses on the Ethereum network and sent back and forth between them.

The ERC-223 standard

When an ERC-20 token is transferred with an erroneous function, that token can be lost forever. The ERC-223 standard solves that issue. If the transaction fails for some reason (e.g., an incorrect recipient address or function used), the contract will send everything back to the beginning, including returning the tokens to the originating wallet. In addition to this, ERC-223 also shortens the data required to process the transaction (i.e., combining two key functions together, the ‘Approve’ and the ‘TransferFrom’), which mechanically reduce gas fees.

The ERC-721 standard

One of the main aspects of the ERC-721 standard is that it can be used for non-fungible, or cryptographically unique and non-interchangeable tokens (namely ‘NFT’), meaning that each token is unique based on its own characteristics, including scarcity and rarity. A good example is the CryptoKitties project that went live at the end of 2017. Their goal was to issued digital assets (i.e., digital cats) on top of the Ethereum blockchain and introduce a gameplay to breed the digital cats with other digital cats so as to create new unique cats. Then the digital cats can be traded on a marketplace against regular tokens such as ERC-20 tokens, ETH, or other cryptocurrencies (i.e., BTC, etc.).

The ERC-998 standard

ERC-998, also known as Composable Non-Fungible Token (CNFT), is a standard extension for any non-fungible token to own another non-fungible ERC-721 token or any stan- Agoora Labs - p. 35

dard fungible tokens (e.g., ERC-20). One great feature of ERC-998 is that transferring it means transferring the entire hierarchy of items that it is composed of (e.g., any ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens that are linked to it), for a single transaction fee.

The ERC-1155 standard

The ERC-1155 standard defines the interface for multiple item/token definitions in a single deployed contract. With the ERC-1155 standard, it is now possible to send any number of items to one or multiple recipients in a single transaction (i.e., n to m). This will significantly reduce the gas required and, in the long run, enhancethe scalability of the Ethereum transaction pool (and so the network’s availability).

Technology watch Started in 2009 with Satoshi Nakamoto’s famous white paper, the Blockchain and ĐApps movements followed and were seen by many as a brand-new grounds for innovation. Al- most 10 years after a first block was mined, the Blockchain landscape is still being struc- tured and we still see new players entering the field. On the “legacy” blockchain landscape we still see a significant allocation of funds toward research and development.

At Agoora Labs, we are committed to not only following the latest innovations and con- cepts, but to being part of the community by contributing to the rise and establishment of a nascent industry.

➤➤ Our ambitious protocol will allow millions of proofs to be processed per day and the number will certainly increase with the growing ecosystem (i.e., partnerships, crypto mass adoption, etc.). It is key for us to stay tuned to the latest technologies, to do our own experiments, to develop of our own proofs of concept, and to protect our findings with patents. The virtuous cycle of innovation is at the heart of the Agoora culture.

Bulletproof Smart Contract approach After a few years of existence, Blockchain-based services have proven to be very easy to deploy and can spread rapidly using social media networks. They also offer more and more autonomously interactive services through self-executing smart contracts. The drawback is that once live on the blockchain, malicious actors can have access to the smart contract code and, if not tested and secured enough, could exploit flaws from the smart contract.

To prevent these financial and reputational risks, we developed our smart contract ma- turity model (SCMM) that will help to reinforce smart contract coding practices and overall smart contract security. Agoora Labs - p. 36

LEVEL #1: USE BEST PRACTICES (SECURETH, OPENZEPPELIN, ETC.)

Ethereum and complex Blockchain programs are new and highly experimental. There- fore, we should expect constant changes in the security landscape, as new bugs and security risks are discovered and new best practices developed. Furthermore, smart contract programming requires a different engineering mindset than developers may be used to. The cost of failure can be high, and change can be difficult, making it in some ways more similar to hardware programming or financial services programming than web or mobile development. It is therefore not enough to defend against known vulnerabilities. Instead, our team applies a new philosophy of development that quickly inte- grates newly found best practices.

LEVEL #2: FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING

Functional languages are useful for programming smart contracts because they are (relatively) easy to verify and can also relatively easily support in-memory transactions, which is useful for contract-style programs.

LEVEL #3: FORMAL VALIDATION OF SMART CONTRACTS

Formal verification is a rigorous mathematical method used to prove the correctness of computer programs. Historically, this methodology has been used to fortify software and hardware logic in military systems, transportation infrastructure, cryptography, and microprocessors. More recently there has been an increased awareness of the benefits of formal verification for smart contract code.

LEVEL #4: DYNAMICALLY GENERATED BULLET PROOF SMART CONTRACTS

To promote the wide adoption of this technology, we need mechanisms that make the specification and interpretation of smart contracts accessible to a broader audience. We propose a modeling approach that supports the semi-automated translation of hu- man-readable contract representations into computational equivalents in order to enable the codification of laws into verifiable and enforceable computational structures that reside within a public blockchain. We identify smart contract components that cor- respond to real-world institutions and propose a mapping that we operationalize using a domain-specific language in order to support the contract modeling process. We will explore this capability based on selected examples and plot out directions for future research on smart contracts. The Agoora Eco-System The Agoora Eco-System - p. 38

The Agoora ecosystem

➤➤ The Agoora protocol will enable a constellation of applications contributing to stimulate the ecosystem. Moreover, the Agoora ecosystem will be composed of different actors to sustain network incentives, to drive Agoora token liquidity, and to enable value storage or transfer.

Figure 9: The Agoora ecosystem

Exchanges There are currently two types of exchanges in the crypto space, the regular cryptocurrency exchange and the instant cryptocurrency exchange. The regular cryptocurrency exchanges allow trading on several asset pairs including fiat to cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrencies to fiat (e.g. Coinbase, Kraken, UPbit, Liquid, etc.). These exchanges require an account and require each user to go through a Know Your Customer (KYC) process. There are also the instant cryptocurrency exchanges that allow users to trade almost any cryptocurrency for a different cryptocurrency via a very simple and quick process that usually can be done anonymously, in some cases requiring just an email address (e.g., Changelly).

Agoora marketplace The Agoora marketplace is comprised of three independent pieces that will help to stimulate the ecosystem, allowing Agoora stakeholders to use their tokens. It is important that the Agoora ecosystem remains attractive and dynamic to support both token liquidity and velocity. The Agoora Eco-System - p. 39

We will provide an open and fair marketplace. It will be an important element of the Agoora ecosystem as it will enable Agoora token holders to easily spend their Agoora tokens for a product, service, access right, etc.

Within the marketplace, there will be an auction system for digital assets (i.e., ERC-721 or ERC-998), enabling users to sell or buy unique assets against Agoora tokens.

Another instance of the marketplace, the “effect marketplace” will be built to allow developers to propose exclusive effects (e.g. visual, audio, etc.) that event sponsors can buy and incorporate in the set of effects for an event.

Figure 10: The Agoora marketplace

➤➤ The Agoora marketplace is a web application, communicating with the Agoora API that interacts with our smart contracts on the blockchain. These smart contracts are responsible for auctioning available items; fully automated they will manage the transfer of the ownership of the purchased items, accepting payments in Agoora tokens. The Agoora Eco-System - p. 40

Empowering stakeholders and rewarding participants ➤➤ The Agoora protocol rewards every party involved in the participation: the participants, the witnesses (who also can be participant, or an external oracle), etc.

Figure 11: The Agoora protocol

Vertical industries and applicability We anticipate plenty of other potential industries and business activities that could see value in using Agoora proofs, for instance (but not limited to): financial services, education, supply chain management, travel, etc. The Agoora Eco-System - p. 41

A crypto democratization lever / enabler (Bring on the Killer App of crypto) The blockchain and token mechanism perfectly fit the Agoora project as they enablead hoc trust and proof services which, in our context, decuples the magnitude of user engagement.

Even though it is key within an ecosystem to implement an incentive mechanism for fostering participation, our experiments have demonstrated that being rewarded for a participation won’t be critical at first. For instance, in the case of an entertainment event (e.g., soccer match, concert, etc.) the crowd will participate anyway, due to the “behavioral momentum” propagation effect.

From a Stealth cryptocurrency wallet to a mainstream one

At the inception of Agoora operations, it will be determined whether to disclose clearly to users that there is a crypto wallet embedded in their mobile phone.

➤➤ We don’t believe that it is critical to end-user adoption for users to be fully aware of the cryptocurrency aspect behind the Agoora protocol. Within the Agoora ecosystem, it will always be the end-user’s decision to embrace the crypto aspect, as it is not a necessary condition of accessing the service.

Any users that want to access the tokens and digital assets will use the pre-installed wallet and will be free to redeem the tokens at any time. In our view, the choice of the underlying crypto wallet is key for mass end-user adoption. For instance, the latest generation wallets embed many high value features such as exchanges, instant crypto swapping, multi-coin & digital asset support, two-factor authentication (2FA), portfolio customization, easy wallet backup & recovery, etc.

Figure 12: Agoora-compliant applications and wallets Agoora Tokenomics The Agoora Eco-System - p. 43

Agoora Tokenomics

Agoora will conduct a crowd sale in Q1 2019 offering AGOORA tokens to investors before the launch of the platform. The AGOORA token generation event will be limited to 1,500,000,000 AGOORA tokens that will be distributed during the sale.

We plan on selling 60% of the tokens during the sale; token that aren’t sold will not be burnt but instead transferred to the reserve.

1,500,000,000 total supply

Token supply Token sale US0�10 US150,000,000 #1 Private sale unit price protocol target capitalization under SA in the S eligible for a discount scheme

C-0-compliant token issued on thereum #2 Public sale US5,000,000 Token ticker public sale soft cap

Unsold tokens will be transferred to the growth pool

There will be two rounds of sales, the private sale and the public sale. The dates of each sale will be communicated on our official communication channels (i.e.,www.agoora.io web site and the @agooraio Twitter account). The Agoora Eco-System - p. 44

A growth pool to support the ecosystem Like any other ecosystem, Agoora will need to carefully monitor the token flow and circulation to insure a symmetric supply and demand. In our view, we believe that it is important to ensure that the Agoora token is liquid enough to sustain protocol usage. In that regard, we will ensure that the Agoora token market has needed supply, and the Foundation growth pool could be used to this end.

Our user behavioral study allowed us to anticipate the following patterns with participants receiving Agoora tokens:

End user behavior Comment

The users keep the tokens in a wallet they 1 “Hodl” the tokens 40% have full control on

The users can spend their tokens to buy 2 Marketplace 15% goodies or anything that can be found in the marketplace

Use of a decentralized instant crypto asset 3 ‘Changelly’ like 15% swap service

Use of an Exchange to cash out the tokens 4 Cashing out 10% into fiat

Users could spend their tokens in the Agoora 5 Inter-Apps ecosystem 10% ecosystem (i.e., any other Apps that use Agoora protocol token)

Crowd-initiated inter- During an event, the crowd will initiate an 6 action (Crowd as a bill- 5% interaction with the performer that the crowd board) will decide to participate in or not

User-initiated inter- A user could place an order requesting that 7 action (Would you marry 5% the crowd perform an interaction during a me?) given event Total: 100%

User-initiated interaction (“Would you marry me?”): A user could place an order requesting the crowd to perform an interaction during a given event.

Crowd-initiated interaction (“Crowd as a billboard”): During an event, the crowd will initiate an interaction or special effect with the performer that the crowd will decide to participate in or not. The Agoora Eco-System - p. 45

With the adoption of the Agoora protocol, and the brand-new ways for people to participate and interact, we are expecting that user-initiated interactions and crowd-initiated interactions will grow significantly.

Community building The community we will build is key for a decentralized project; the more engaged the community is, the more traction, contribution, and exposure the project will get. To build our community we will use several marketing techniques combined with a worldwide social media campaign. We will also perform application drops as well as provide bounties.

Application drop: Users who install the mobile application (e.g. KrowdBeat) will receive free tokens that can be used immediately.

Bounties are reward mechanisms offered to users in exchange for performing certain tasks. It is a means of advertising our product and company and also a way of building our community. Within the cryptocurrency scene, bounties are part of the initial coin offering (ICO) campaign. During the bounty program, we will provide compensation for a number of tasks such as marketing, bug reporting, social tasks, etc.

Research and Development We are still experiencing rapid movement in the blockchain technology field. To remain at the forefront of the industry and related trends, we will allocate 20% of our proceeds to research and development, making sure that we efficiently assess and utilise the best solutions offered by the Blockchain industry.

First and foremost, we will immediately start work on our own Layer 2 Blockchain solution to support the extremely high volume of proofs required to fully document every participant’s involvement as witness and rewarded party, while also making this blockchain’s footprint small enough so that it can eventually run on every smartphone or wearable that a participant brings to an event.

Our R&D effort on this tailored Layer 2 Blockchain solution will also consider the design, development, and testing of our own adapted consensus algorithm where, for example, a majority of smartphones located outside of any single venue will be required to validate the next block in order to avoid any possibility of collusion.

Finally, our R&D will focus not only on core Blockchain activities and technologies but will also consider performing research on interrelated topics such as IoT (Internet of Things), AI (Artificial Intelligence), VR (Virtual Reality), etc., as they could be connected to the Agoora Blockchain ecosystem in a near future. The Agoora Eco-System - p. 46

Marketing Bringing in users, developers and special effect producers using marketing campaigns online and physically events that promote our protocol.

Partnerships To build and deliver the best product we plan to meet with several key players in various industries to establish strategic partnerships. This approach is key for us as we believe that bootstrapping the best features from tier 1 service or technology providers will tremendously increase our impact when going live. Road Map & Key Milestones Road Map & Key Milestones - p. 48

Roadmap & key milestones

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Figure 13: Agoora roadmap and key milestones

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Team, Advisors and Partners

Key team members

Co-founder & CEO (Chief Executive Officer): Martin Renière

Martin is a serial entrepreneur who previously founded Minacom Labs, which was acquired by Tektronix in 2006, and most recently founded Nuvoola, a cloud solution provider specialized in AI and Blockchain. As a senior executive, he as led innovators and experts at Aimia (Aeroplan), Dynatrace, Compuware, and Mediaxoft. Additionally, he and his team delivered multi-million-dollar global projects to more than 100 of the largest companies (Loyalty, Financial, Govern- ment and Commercial sectors) in the world.

Co-founder & CTO (Chief Technical Officer): Jean-Yves Martineau

A recognized thought leader in ecommerce and supply chain management, Mr. Martineau co-founded Cactus Commerce in 1995. By 2007, the 250-employee company entered a long-term agreement with Microsoft to jointly develop and market Microsoft’s e-commerce platform, Commerce Server. Over the last 15 years, Mr. Martineau advised some of the world best-known brands on digital strategy and innovated with ideas and technologies that stood the test of time.

Co-founder & Chief Scientist: Mario Perron

Mario is an established entrepreneur and publish researcher with 25+ years of experience as a strategic and architecture consultant. He founded, raised funding, and led Manyeta Informatics, Semiosis Interactive, and KrowdBeat. During his career, he has been involved in executive management, solution architecture, international research and development, and business development. As the founder of Agoora Labs, he drives the product evolution roadmap and is our chief scientist.

COO: Jean-Frédéric Loué

With his background in management and technology consulting, Jean-Frédéric was involved in leading significant transformation programs in various sectors such as Banking, Public Sector, Nuclear, Chemistry. In 2016, Jean-Frédéric was instrumental in streamlining payment operations for a tier 1 international investment bank. Blockchain enthusiast since 2013, he was involved in crypto mining operations and started experimenting the potential of the distributed ledger technology. Jean-Frédéric holds a master’s degree in IT and Electronic engineering, he is also graduated with an MBA in management. Team, Advisors, & Partners - p. 51

CMO: Scott Sumner

Scott is a tech marketing leader that has led communication strategies contributing to the acquisition of several startups in telecom, IT, and cloud computing over his 20 year career. He worked as VP Strategy and Communications at Nuvoola, and VP Marketing at Accedian, Performant, Minacom, and Aethera - all acquired start-ups. He has led new product introduction and partnerships at a wide range of multinational and mid-sized tech companies in IoT, aero- space logistics, and laser physics industries. Scott has a background in system engineering, data analytics, and AI, and holds degrees in Engineering (M.Eng, B.Eng).

Vice President Strategic Partnerships and Growth: Dave Ozipko

Dave has over 20 years of experience building Fuel Industries which was recognized as one of the top digital agencies in Canada focused on helping Fortune 500 global brands connect with GenZ, Millennial and Family audiences. He has an extensive history building deep digital brand experiences with expertise in mobile apps and social games, virtual worlds, branded entertainment, interactive rich media advertising and digital loyalty programs.

Lead blockchain architect: Erick Brito

Erick is a passionate about technology, a team player with more than 20 suc- cessful years of experience. He has worked as an architect, programmer, programmer analyst, systems analyst, business analyst, instructor and project manager; in the banking, insurance, telecom, government (e-government) and in application performance management sectors. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Mechanical Engineering and a MBA.

Lead blockchain development (incl. ĐApps): Francis Moreau Scaling blockchain architect: Derek Linke Business Development: Craig Makino

Advisor Partners Louis Cleroux, CEO, Timechain • Exchange:

CEO of Timechain. Mr. Cleroux is a serial entrepreneur with a background in management consulting and 10 years of experience in digital marketing for multinational corporations. He co-founded Leadweb a digital agency that created appli- • Technology: cations for brands like the Airport of Toronto, L’OREAL, Shop- pers drug mart, CKOI, Simons and Esports league (ESL). Now specializing in blockchain technology, Mr. Cleroux and his team are creating the next generation of digital asset management platform called Timechain. Definitions Definitions - p. 53

Definitions

A PROOF In a blockchain context, a “Proof” is a historical record stored on a blockchain that cannot be tampered with. In Agoora, the decentralized Proofs of Participation, Presence, Place, and Person will be recorded on a Layer 2 chain.

BLOCKCHAIN Using cryptography to keep exchanges secure, Blockchain technology provides a decentralized database or “digital ledger” of transactions that everyone on the network can see. Here the network is essentially a chain of computers (nodes) that must all reach consensus, agreeing on an exchange (or transaction) before it can be recorded in a block. The network relies on cryptography, allowing each participant on the network to manipulate the ledger in a secure way without the need for a central authority.

ĐAPPS ĐApps stands for Decentralized Applications, they are digital applications or programs that exist and run on a blockchain or P2P network of computers instead of a single centralized computer. One significant difference with well-known current applications (i.e., Twitter) is that ĐApps are outside the control of a single authority. ĐApps are generally built on one or more smart contracts.

ETHER (Ξ) Ether (ETH) is the cryptocurrency that fuels smart contracts, ĐApps, and transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.

GAS Gas is the internal pricing measure for running a transaction or contract in Ethereum. It has to be carefully considered and calculated to make sure that the transaction cost is set correctly and, in addition, to prevent transaction failure.

NODE A network node is a connection point (endpoint) that can receive, create, store, or send data along distributed network routes. A node also contains the network rules and will make sure to en- force them across the network. Definitions - p. 54

ORACLE An oracle is usually a third party that provides data or information that you don’t have access to (or don’t want access to). For instance, weather data, flight status, etc. An oracle is typically considered as a centralized provider, so could be perceived as a point of failure in a decentralized system. As a result, where available, we will propose multiple oracle sources to increase the proof’s reliability.

SMART CONTRACT Formalized by Nick Szabo in 1997, the smart contract idea is not easy to define as it may have different meanings depending on the angle your looking at it. The first real live application of it are the vending machines that only execute a function if required conditions are met (e.g. delivering a drink or sandwich). Since then, the smart contract concept has tremendously evolved to become a computer program that runs on a blockchain, moreover, it acts as an agreement where the terms of the agreement can be preprogrammed with the ability to self-execute and self-enforceitself. Smart contracts are the key component of distributed applications, or ĐApps.

WALLET A cryptocurrency wallet is a secure digital wallet coded in a software package used to store, send, and receive digital currency such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or any other kinds of digital assets. There are plenty of cryptocurrency wallets in the space with different UX/UI and features. Disclaimer

All of the information presented in this white paper is tentative and is subject to change at any time. None of the information herein should be construed as legal, accounting, or investment advice of any kind. This document does not represent a solicitation for investment, nor does it represent an offering or sale, public or private, of any kind of financial instrument, security or otherwise, in any jurisdic- tion. This white paper is provided as is, for informational purposes only, with the intention of describing a prospective software system. Contact

For more information about the Agoora participation token, please contact at one of the following addresses

O. +1 855 518-8080 @agooraio agooraio [email protected] Montreal | Zug | Singapore