Everipedia is a blockchain based project that features an online encyclopedia similar to the all famous Wikipedia. I had the opportunity to speak exclusively with Dr. Larry Sanger, Wikipedia Co-Founder and Everipedia CIO and ask Sam Kazemian, Everipedia Co-Founder questions about the project. Below is a summary of our Q&A session which explains the ins and outs of the project along with the various aspects of their IQ token.
What was your main reason for leaving Wikipedia and starting Everipedia?
Sanger stopped working for Wikipedia back in 2002, way before the introduction of blockchain or the creation of Everipedia. Sanger always thought there’s gotta be a way to improve on Wikipedia. There could be so many more people and experts involved, the articles could be higher quality, and there could be less trolls dominating the proceedings.
According to Sanger, all of those problems that he saw early on have not gone away. Sanger saw potential in Everipedia with their modern design and new model and having extensive experience working with Wikipedia it only made sense to join Everipedia as a CIO.
What are some differences between Wikipedia and Everipedia?
Everipedia has a lot more people working on the project. According to Dr. Sanger, when he was part of Wikipedia there “were basically two and a half at most people working on it.” With Everipedia there are three really good developers, 10 people on the editorial staff writing articles, and other people on the executive team. Everipedia more closely resembles a traditional startup, with funding close to $30 million from outside investors. According to Sanger, the investors come from the people behind Block.one, EOS, and Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital.
On the platform side, Everipedia allows anybody can make pages on anything. There editing is more modern and there is appreciation for mems and youtube videos. There are also verified accounts for celebrities and noteworthy individuals.
How can people get their account verified?
Right now if you want to be verified, you message someone from the editorial staff to manually verify you.
What made you decide to choose to build Everipedia on EOS rather than ETH or another platform?
The development of EOS is led by Daniel Larimer who was the Co-Founder of Steemit – which is the first major content blockchain. EOS is developed specifically for utility tokens and is tailored to content. The long term plan includes the ability to put a virtual computer on a blockchain and Everipedia would like to be part of that computer.
EOS also has a staking mechanism built in which makes sense for Everipedia. When someone proposes a new edit to Everipedia, they have to stake a small amount of tokens. They lose those tokens if the edit isn’t approved by the community but that provides a small amount of assurance that the information isn’t going to be completely frivolous.
How does Voting work with Everipedia? Does it cost IQ? How much does it cost?
It doesn’t exactly cost IQ. For now, you convert some IQ into Brain Power (BP), and when you take any official action that interacts with the blockchain you have to burn a little bit of BP but you get it back.
Relationship between IQ and BP?
There is a 1:1 ratio between the two and you get BP from staking IQ.
Why don’t you get IQ from staking IQ?
Initially, Everipedia didn’t want people to worry that they are losing their tokens when they are staking them so it was converted into something that wasn’t immediately impacting the blockchain. But, the team decided that this is a complexity that isn’t needed and BP will be depreciated.
According to Sam Kzemian – Co Founder of Everipedia: “You get IQ for writing good articles and curating articles. To partake in those activities, you need to stake IQ. Staking IQ is technically the “cost” or the “fee” for using app on the blockchain. You don’t get rewarded for just using the app. You have to use it well/create good content.”
Besides voting and editing are there any other roles for IQ?
You can use IQ to vote on new smart contracts that define the governance of the network. IQ is a measure of one’s ability to determine policies for the whole network.
Let’s talk more about IQ. Is it mineable?
It’s not mineable but the way it is unlocked or created is when a person gets an article approved they get a certain amount of IQ based on a complex equation.
Sam clarified on the topic, saying that it’s mineable in the sense that you get rewarded IQ for doing good work. However, it’s not a proof of work coin so it’s not mineable in the same way Bitcoin is.
Why are there 4.5 billion circulating supply vs 10 billion total supply. Does the Everipedia team hold a certain amount of IQ?
According to Sam: “This has nothing to do with us. This is Coinmarketcap’s definition of circulating supply. CMC does not count coins that have not yet verifiably hit exchanges or left “founders/company” wallets. We actually disagree with their metrics and in our internal valuation metrics have 10B as the circulating supply. We think 4.5B is a very misleading metric CMC is perpetuating. It’s not up to us.”
How can you earn IQ? How is IQ rewarded based on editing? Is it a set amount per edit?
Sam: “It’s not a per edit scale. Users who have IQ staked can curate other people’s content/edits and vote how good they think the work is. The more votes you get from fellow IQ stakers the more of the token rewards you are entitled to. For example, if you just add a period and grammar fixes to an article, you might only get a very small amount of votes and proportionally get a small amount of IQ as a reward compared to someone who just authored a well-sourced biography of a famous American rapper.”
Looking at the tutorial it says you need 3 things: EOS account, IQ tokens, Scatter account. Could you explain the role of each of these things. I was able to create an account, login via twitter, and start creating a page, what am I missing?
Sam: “Scatter is a wallet for holding IQ/EOS. It is not needed anymore as there are other ways to hold IQ/stake such as OREID (which lets you use your social media account as a bridge to EOS). But from the protocol level, yes, you need IQ and an EOS account to use the Everipedia app. We’ve just done a good job of slowly taking care of those needs for non-tech savvy users so that it all melts into the background and they can get to using the site and editing like normal.”
Looking on CMC Everipedia did not have a marketcap until October 2nd, what is the reason behind it?
That was a problem on CMC’s end. It took them awhile to get all the EOS dApps listed. The lack of a marketcap has nothing to do with Everipedia, nothing changed in October.
Sam clarified: “Again, this is all CMC. They decide when there is “enough liquidity and market data” to enter a market cap on their website for each token. We do not control anything on CMC’s site. It is all their policies.”
Everipedia has quite a bit of activity. How many users / editors does it have? Is there a way to track that?
While the exact amount of users for the platform is not available, according to Everipedia’s Co-founder and Chief Community Officer, Mahbod Moghadam, the number of Everipedia editors is in the thousands. Since recently, Everipedia switched to a completely crypto-centric model only allowing users with EOS wallets to register and edit articles, the number of editors is currently in the hundreds. However, by the end of the month, the site will return to its norm of thousands of editors and allow new users to register using their Facebook/Twitter login information.
What new features are coming to Everipedia?
There are a few things. The most important thing is a new front end. Editing articles will be as if you are editing a google doc. Creating accounts will be as easy as it is on any major social media.
Beyond that, being able to contribute to the network from a lot of different sources of articles. Ultimately, Everipedia wants to have metadata about all the encyclopedias in the world on the blockchain. A system where you can track ratings of those articles on the blockchain.
Also, a prediction market is being built on top of the IQ network. There is nothing about the whitepaper of the backend technology of Everipedia that requires that content be an encyclopedia. As a result, one of the directions the company is taking is to support “knowledge” dApps that are interested in different kinds of information. Last but not least, another project that is in the pipelines is a replacement for Quora.
I would like to thank Dr. Larry Sanger and Sam Kazemian for taking the time to speak with NullTX. If you guys have any more questions feel free to leave them in the comment section below.