TAIKAI Garden Whitepaper: Snapshot Report

This article is a brief overview of the TAIKAI Garden Whitepaper, a document that introduces and explains in detail the - "TAIKAI Garden"- , a new paradigm to foster innovation and decentralized project development, that stems from TAIKAI’s experience as a hackathon hosting platform.

In the following sections, we will summarize the key aspects of the Garden Whitepaper, however, for a more comprehensive understanding, we encourage you to read it fully at TAIKAI Garden Whitepaper.

TAIKAI Garden: planting the first seed?

There are many types of initiatives dedicated to supporting early-stage projects, with their primary common goal being to provide access to funding and valuable networking opportunities. However, few effectively focus on community contribution as a pathway to innovation. This is why the TAIKAI Garden stands out as an initiative that aims to support innovators within an incentivized network.

The TAKAI Garden Ecosystem

TAIKAI Garden’s sustainability is modelled with a Token Engineering systems approach where the native utility token TKAI is used as work token. Inside the ecosystem, participants can assume several roles at the same time, distinguished between:

• Project Owners: individual Participants that have initiated a Project and are responsible for developing it. 
• Mentors: knowledgeable Participants who share insights with the community in an on-demand manner.
• Farmers: Participants holding the Validation Threshold and can vote on Projects and Projects Updates and other assessments. They can vote on which they believe to be the most promising Projects and validate/invalidate updates or other assessments.

The ecosystem has 2 main tools: the Mentors list, and the Project Sandbox, which we’ll cover now.

Mentors 🧑‍🏫

The Mentors list showcases the Participants in the ecosystem that provide insights, knowledge, and help to projects. Any Participant can apply to become a Mentor by filling out a Mentorship Application, connecting their wallet, and holding 5.000 TKAI (the Mentorship Threshold). After its submission, the Mentorship Application undergoes an assessment process (more details on Chapter 3.3.2 and 3.4.5 of the TAIKAI Garden Whitepaper).

Project Sandbox 🏗️

The Project Sandbox is where all the magic happens. This sandbox is dedicated to showcasing projects within the ecosystem and serves as a platform for aspiring entrepreneurs to develop their ideas into fully-fledged projects with the support of a community. While participation in the TAIKAI Garden by a project is intended to fulfil innovators' needs, participation is not expected to be permanent. This means that projects are expected to transition out of the ecosystem once their needs are satisfied, making room for new projects.

There are two possible entry paths to the Project Sandbox:

1- After participating in a TAIKAI hackathon, the participant can "add a project to Garden" to automatically fork/clone it into TAIKAI Garden for further development, with no associated costs.

2- By creating a project from scratch directly within TAIKAI Garden.

There is no associated cost in creating a Project in Project Sandbox, regardless of the entry path chosen, as the main purpose of it is to foster innovation and the creation of new projects.

TAIKAI Garden’s Project Lifecycle

After accessing the Projects Sandbox, every project goes through a project lifecycle divided into different stages.

Phase 1- Seed Project

By default, every project that enters TAIKAI Garden is initially set as Seed Project. This allows the community and the Project Owner to perform most of the possible interactions with the project and opens the project to community following and participation.

Stage 2- Entry Into the Innovation Farming Program

The first essential step for a project to qualify for the Innovation Farming Program involves minting a Project NFT and setting up a Project wallet, which can be overseen either by the Project Owner or by project members once permissions are established.

The Project NFT is built upon the Ethereum ERC-721 token standard and serves as a non-fungible digital certificate that titles the ownership of a Project within the TAIKAI Garden, designating the wallet assigned as the Project’s primary main authority. This extends to encompass editing rights, updates, and entitlement to potential rewards. A detailed profile in the Project Sandbox is added and will serve as the online representation of the project in the platform.

Phase 3- Sprout Project

By minting the Project NFT, the project is eligible for the Innovation Farming stage and moves from Seed Project to Sprout Project. Now, Project Owners or Participants can perform the same interactions as a Seed Project, while also promoting project development in TAIKAI Garden and receiving community donations.  

These actions allow the Project Owner to immediately engage with the community and leverage its project exposure to further develop. While Sprout Projects are not yet eligible for Network Rewards, as they have not yet qualified for the Innovation Farming Program, they can work towards obtaining such qualification.

4- Farming Project

For a Sprout Project to become a Farming Project needs to qualify for the Innovation Farming Program.

Once participating in the program, the actions permitted in this stage include: (i) all the actions/permissions of Seed and Sprout Projects; (ii) Farmers voting with veTKAI on the Project; (iii) Farmers assessing Project Updates and (iv) Project qualification for rewards.

5- Graduating Project

Upon completing the Innovation Farming Program, the Project will transition from Farming to Graduating. In this stage, community members can follow and interact with the Project’s activity and Project Updates, as well as make donations of TKAI as a reward to the Project. 

Graduating Projects are expected to transition out of the ecosystem once their needs are satisfied, making room for new projects.

Innovation Farming Program 🌱

Innovation Farming is the program that incentivizes the supply of Projects in TAIKAI Garden. It consists of sprints, which are Innovation Farming Program microcycles during which Farming Projects develop and Participants engage with them for Rewards. Farming Sprints are held continuously, which means that one sprint starts right after the previous sprint ends and has a duration of 2 weeks.

During a Farming Sprint, Farming Projects are ranked based on a scoring function. At the conclusion of each sprint, a snapshot of the ranking is captured and Rewards are distributed to both Project Owners and to Voting Participants that vote in the Projects, according to the rank position.

When a new sprint begins, Projects score functions are reset, voting allocation is reset and each Participant's voting power increases. Besides rank rewards, a separate Rewards Pool is destined to assessments performed in the network by Farmers that hold the Validation Threshold. This pool is also distributed by the end of each sprint among Participants and Projects.

How to qualify for the Innovation Farming Program?

Simultaneously with the Innovation Farming Program ranking system, a second ranking system will be in place to select and qualify the Seed Projects participating in the next Innovation Farming Batch. By the end of each sprint of a given batch, the top 5 ranked projects are qualified, transitioning them into Farming Projects. Consequently, previous Farming Projects in the same Innovation Farming Batch also transition into Graduating Projects, therefore, ceasing their participation in the Innovation Farming Program. In essence, the system is built to periodically refresh Projects within the program.

TKAI Token Model

TKAI is TAIKAI’s native ERC-20 utility token that can be exclusively used on TAIKAI Platform and TAIKAI Garden. TKAI’s utility includes:

• Means of exchange: TKAI serve as payment for accessing gated services, such as minting the Project NFT, featuring a Project Update on TAIKAI Platform  or on TAIKAI Garden. These payments are deducted from the user's balances and contribute to the TAIKAI treasury as network revenue.  

• Feeless peer-to-peer interactions: Users will have the freedom to engage in peer-to-peer transactions such as mentorship and donations without any fees charged.

• Staking: TKAI can be staked to access several rights while at the same time incentivizing long-term holding and commitment to TAIKAI Platform’s goals.

• Access to voting power: Upon staking TKAI, a Wallet becomes eligible to receive veTKAI, and the Farmer will be granted with powers to vote and validate Projects. The TKAI is neither transferable nor tradable since they are locked in the Farmer’s private Wallet.

• Token Incentives Flywheel: The Token Incentives Flywheel is a mechanism to encourage ongoing activity within the TAIKAI ecosystem by continuously distributing rewards back to active participants. This system is designed to create a reinforcing loop, where participant activity increases the utility and value of the TKAI token.

Token Distribution

TKAI’s total supply of 300M (three hundred million) preminted Tokens will be initially allocated to TAIKAI Treasury and will be fully distributed over the course of 120 (one hundred and twenty) months to the ecosystem.

Below is a detailed description of the different categories for the token allocation and the respective vesting.

• Hackathon rewards – Rewards allocation towards TAIKAI hackathon participants from previous and future editions, including hackers, juries, and mentors, in an approximately linear vesting schedule over the next 120 months. Monthly allocation volume will be highly dependent on hackathon frequency and personalization. On launch, approximately 15% of the supply will be distributed among previous hackathon participants, dating from 2019.

• Innovation Farming  – Rewards towards highly rated Projects and their respective Farmers in TAIKAI Garden in each Innovation Farming Program Batch. This is to ensure an adequate reserve for rewards distribution over the following 120 months and for product market fit iteration. Rewards volume will always be set prior to the batch’s period and LayerX will always inform the community of any changes.

• Team, Equity Partners, and Advisors  – Allocation towards the LayerX team and its shareholders & advisors (the “LayerX Members”), responsible for planning the strategy, execution, and development of the TAIKAI Garden. The allocation will be subject to a cliff of 6 (six) months after the TGE (the “Cliff Period”) and, once the Cliff Period is over, 10% will be immediately distributed to linearly.

• Other Community Rewards (Staking, Liquidity Provision, Points): Allocation towards users that have performed specific actions within the TAIKAI Platform and TAIKAI Garden, such as completing their profile, performing social actions, becoming a farmer, staking tokens, and providing liquidity to decentralized exchanges. The distribution will be made linearly over the course of 48 months.

• Liquidity Provision: Allocation towards enlisting the token on tradeable markets. The entirety of the supply towards this allocation will be placed in both centralized and decentralized exchanges within 24 months as from TGE.

TAIKAI Garden Whitepaper

TAIKAI Garden is a product extension of TAIKAI that redefines the innovation landscape’s status quo by connecting innovators to an inclusive and collaborative environment. Designed on an incentive framework, the ecosystem answers the need for sustained and democratized access to support aspiring innovators turn their ideas into impactful businesses. TKAI is a utility token that grants access to TAIKAI Platform and TAIKAI Garden, as described in the TAIKAI Garden Whitepaper. TKAI is not intended to constitute securities of any form, units in a business trust, units in a collective investment scheme, capital markets product, or any other form of regulated product or investment in any jurisdiction.

This article, the TAIKAI Garden Whitepaper or any other document available with information about TKAI does not constitute a prospectus or an offer document of any sort and is not intended to constitute an offer of securities (“TKAI”).No TKAI should be construed, interpreted, classified, or treated as enabling, or according to any opportunity for the Participants to participate in or receive profits, income, or other payments or returns arising from or in connection with the LayerX, the tokens, or the proceeds of the token sale, or to receive sums paid out of such profits, income, or other payments or returns.

We invite you to explore the full version of the TAIKAI Garden Whitepaper where you can find in-depth information about the ecosystem goals, dynamics, and the benefits your project can reap by joining the TAIKAI Garden.