Concerns about Gaia's Blockchain Plans

[P0LYBIUS]

Update: Gutted the old version of this post, so even though it looks similar to before, the information has been updated to reflect the July 2020 version of the document. Please click through, read the links, and go over more than just my notes before downvoting (while I understand that I was wrong before, I can't help but feel that a lot of the downvotes are just people seeing the title and a massive wall of text and going 'i'm not reading all of that'). Yes, I have also changed the title to be more accurate- if you've already read this thread, I apologize.

THAT SAID... the revised version:

Digging through old flash spaces to archive them (since flash is going down in 2020) and found these- keep in mind that they were all publically accessible, and I did not have to hack, cheat, or otherwise brute-force my way to find these documents.

• The document in question, which details how Gaia wants to monetize artists and game developers via a cryptocurrency created in 2019, called G-Tokens. It's a pretty hefty packet- 26 pages of legalese. While most of the information is still the same as before, this version is updated to include information about a potential web browser used to access GON, as well as detailing how they plan on selling user's art/games alongside tokens (p. 8 )
  
  
• On page 9, they explain that one 'G-Token' (the cryptocurrency) equals $1, and can be used to purchase 'items' (user's art/video games). They also say that they want cross-chain circulation to come into play, meaning that they want G-Token to eventually be used as a form of offsite currency (similar to Bitcoin).
  
  
• On page 16, they specifically emphasize how they'll 'tokenize' the marketplace on Gaia, meaning that whenever a user trades a randomly selected set of items, it makes Gaia money ("By using GON's SDK to interconnect with GaiaChain, hundreds of thousands of virtual clothing are tokenized to GaiaChain. These operations will not affect the user's experience within GaiaOnline community. When user places a virtual cloth in the "backpack", this virtual cloth will be permanently stored on GaiaChain, and can be traded in the GON trading platform." )
  
  
• On page 18, they state that they want to open the potential for game/asset rentals and sales using GON ("In addition to the self-operated GON leasing service, we will also support communities to open their own rental areas on the game platform, as well as individual users to open their own rental counters. Users can sublease their collected digital content assets (ITEM) and generate significant revenue. The rental method can be exclusive or shared based on the rental fee." ) ... considering that Gaia can't even punish art thieves properly, I don't see this ending well legally (bootleg Pokemon Blue using Gaia assets, anyone?)
  
  
• Even if someone played legally, Gaia wants to take anywhere from 10% to 50% of artist revenue as 'commission fees' ("We will charge ITEM transaction fee. Artistsand digital content creators work through service fees from the very beginning, and agencies typically take 10% to 50% commission from the artist's net sales. This commission system is proven and accepted by all stakeholders, so we intend to keep this system..." )
  
  
• On page 22, you can see that they still plan on moving forward, they've just shifted the roadmap forward in date (Having GON on the market by June 2020, launch GaiaChain in September of this year, and so on, until having it fully implemented by May 2021).
  
  
• On page 25, they literally say that if GaiaChain does not do well ("When the dividend return rate is not high (for example,the annualized return rate is less than 10%),the repurchase process will be initiated." ) then they will artificially buy back and destroy their own currency. If you're an artist that got involved with this, only for it to (as expected) flop, any money you put into it could literally be destroyed to artificially inflate its value ("The GON Foundation will purchase GON Token from the market at market price and destroy them to reduce GON Token circulation. This will indirectly increase the future dividend ratio of each GON Token." )
  
  
• This is most likely the Fractal that Gaia is partnering with, since it's the only business-related one I could find. This quote in particular concerns me: "Fractal ID is capable of checking for Politically Exposed Persons and Individuals from High Risk Jurisdictions. Depending on your compliance needs, Fractal ID can either reject these people or run further enhanced verification methods to measure their suitability to participate in your services so that you can have a truly global user base." It's a background check company, but one that seems to only have dealt with bitcoin-generating and/or bank security. Gaia may use it to vet their artists, but given the recent controversy, I highly doubt that that's what it'd be used for.
  

UPDATE: For ease of access, I've also made a summary of the timeline (all personal commentary is in italics, to denote that it is not an original statement from Gaia).

• Late 2018/Early 2019: Users find the first version of GON's website, due to user backlash, Gaia allegedly drops the original Gaia Wallet project.
  
  
• June 2020: Gaia creates the Gaia Open Network, disperses 10M in G-Tokens among ~900 accounts. The last known transaction occured 44 days ago, or July 29th, 2020, according to etherscan.io.
  
  
• September 2020: Gaia plans on launching GaiaWallet, the Digital Content Trading Platform, and GaiaChain. Additionally, Gaia wants to also tokenize the items on the marketplace, meaning that any trades, sales, or purchases made on Gaia would generate Tokens for them. This is the point that we are currently at.
  
  
• October 2020: Gaia wants to open GaiaWallet, the Digital Content Trading Platform, and GaiaChain to the public. At this point, artists who have volunteered for the Art Contest will most likely be offered real life money and/or Tokens in lieu of plat/cash rewards.
  
  
• 2021: Gaia wants to launch Southeast Asian and Chinese divisions, encouraging Chinese developers to share their games via Gaia. Later on, Gaia wants to launch a game development division that will specialize in creating blockchain games- for context, Abstractism and (allegedly) Cooking Mama: Cookstar are the two more nefarious examples of blockchain games. These blockchain games will be allowed to use assets that users submitted- or, in simpler terms, if you give your art to Gaia, they will turn around and sell it to blockchain game developers.
  

TL;DR: Gaia's social media being trash/ATS ignoring the problems with the social media pages isn't just them being unaware, it's them deliberately trying to lure in artists to further monetize the site, this time by giving that art to blockchain game developers.

[P0LYBIUS]

Editing this to make it a "Where do we go from here?" statement: This is just my general suggestions. I understand that a site has to make money somehow (especially one allegedly struggling as much as Gaia is), but it should obviously be done in a less despicable manner. What I am personally doing is:

• Stop sharing any original art on the site, and stop tagging Gaia on social media. They've clearly shown that they have no shame about stealing art, don't give them any leverage to make excuses.
  
  
• For now, reduce usage of the MP, and stop using trades and gifting entirely. We don't know what 100 items are monetized and not using the MP at all isn't an option, but I'd bet my bottom dollar it's the high demand rares (Halos, OMGs, NHB, etc). Each trade gets monetized, so refusing to use the trade system outright is the best way to go (I'm not sure if gifts get counted as trades or not, but I don't want to take a chance.)
  
  
• Stop giving Gaia money until they clarify what's going on and/or if they've even started the G-Token method (though with the recent art push, I'm pretty sure that they're 100% on schedule). I know some people's first reactions will be "omg gaia's doing it because they're desperate for money : ((((( let me buy as many things in the cash shop to show them the RIGHT way to make money" but all it does is reward a site's bad behavior.
  
  
• Similar to the last bullet- PrivacyBadger, Privacy Possum (Chrome/Firefox), DuckDuckGo Essentials (Firefox/Chrome, and UBlock Origin keeps any site from making revenue that you don't voluntarily give them, whether it be ad revenue or selling your data. I'd recommend these for any site in general, because this is just a reminder that ANY site could be doing this.
  

[Metropol Rubbish]

Editing since I wrote my previous post in a rush.

Thanks for the write-up! I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, but I'm not fond of the continued lack of transparency on Gaia's part. If I knew more, perhaps I would be less inclined to think negatively about this development. I'll need to do more research, but I'm personally withdrawing funding for a while until I feel more comfortable, despite, admittedly, overlooking their unscrupulous practices and giving money to the site since '06. Considering Gaia's history with their side ventures, I'm concerned that it will not be well-realized and I do not want to play into it further as best as I can.

[P0LYBIUS]

aaaaand one final bump because i edited a few more things.

out of curiosity, why the downvotes? if there's anything here that doesn't make sense/is inaccurate, i'd love to know so that i can correct it

[Amoreyna]

This feels like yet another potential misadventure of them.

But out of curiosity, how would they create cryptocurrency from us selling/trading items on the marketplace?

[kloobkloob]

I thought they put the kibosh on this years ago?

Edit: But I'm not gonna lie, I don't see an issue with monetizing the marketplace if I am understanding this correctly. Seems like a good way to earn some revenue on the side without shoving more gaia cash down our throats

[peachvine]

this was a thing they were trying a few years ago. uhh pocketcon? i think this is the same thing?

they said it never happened because the chinese investors pulled out at the last minute at the end of 2018. (i think my memory is rip) it was overwhelming regarded as a bad idea from users around the site.

[garlic dead]

i feel like Gaia has a huge problem with not communicating with their users. we've had the Dark Mode fiasco, and now we have this.
can we please get some transparency for once?

[P0LYBIUS]

mank demes

I thought they put the kibosh on this years ago?

Edit: But I'm not gonna lie, I don't see an issue with monetizing the marketplace if I am understanding this correctly. Seems like a good way to earn some revenue on the side without shoving more gaia cash down our throats

peachvine

this was a thing they were trying a few years ago. uhh pocketcon? i think this is the same thing?

they said it never happened because the chinese investors pulled out at the last minute at the end of 2018. (i think my memory is rip) it was overwhelming regarded as a bad idea from users around the site.

While the document I found was updated last 2019 I stand corrected, it's also from July of this year (2020/06, as the url says)- I'm almost 90% sure they're going through with it anyways as 1. the artist initiative is still following as planned, and 2. they've recently (july of this year) made a new logo for GON.

Regarding the 'good way to earn some revenue' thing, I would normally be on board, but 1. NOBODY was aware that it was happening, and 2. the company they have involved advertises the fact that they harvest and sell their user's data (similar to Niantic and Tencent). As for the 'investors pulled out in 2018' thing, the packet may be addressing that with the whole 'Ethereum vs Fractal' thing.

[P0LYBIUS]

skimmed the latest document, and tldr: users are right, i accidentally linked/took notes from an old version of the pdf, currently in the process of gutting/updating my post to use information from the new pdf- however, the fact still stands that as of july 2020, gaia is still going forward with GON, GaiaChain, and selling user's data/using the marketplace as a means to generate cryptocurrency.

[Twisted LadyTwisted Lady]

Oh, what the ********. emotion_facepalm

I don't know enough about crypto and blockchain to really understand most of this issue. But, if they're using our site activity to generate income for themselves, that's something we should have been told outright, when this decision was made. I probably wouldn't have even minded it if they'd been honest, but keeping it a secret and doing it behind our backs makes me uncomfortable and now I do not want to be part of it.

[Zeetheus]

I'm not gonna lie, the fact that stuff like this keeps coming up is really skeeving me out. Can't speak for everyone, but I don't think the average internet user understands or trusts cryptocurrency, and from what I understand blockchain is just a shiny new self-destructing digital format.

(Self-destructing in a metaphorical sense because, the more transactions it goes through, the more the history or "chain" is added to, and the more the blockchain... element? "item"? grows in file size, until it gets prohibitively expensive to even acquire. Blockchain gradually becomes a waste of bandwidth and processing power for anyone without access to good machines and internet, because IIRC you have to move the ENTIRE blockchain unit for it to not be considered fraud. Or at least, that's my very basic understanding - I'm not into scams. sweatdrop )

I can't go back thru my post history as Luminary Melee wrecked it, but I do remember that something akin to this came up a year or two ago, and I believe when asked to comment Lanzer (or Jak Bauer? one of the staff) said it was "just a proposal" but was really vague as to whether Gaia as a company was moving forward with it or not? Don't quote me on that though, it's been a minute.

[Nyadriel]

peachvine

this was a thing they were trying a few years ago. uhh pocketcon? i think this is the same thing?

they said it never happened because the Chinese investors pulled out at the last minute at the end of 2018. (i think my memory is rip) it was overwhelming regarded as a bad idea from users around the site.

I remember it. I thought it a BAD idea then and I am still extremely uncomfortable with it. This may end up being a failure. The site does not even have enough members anyway, for it to be worth their while. They REALLY need to concentrate on updating the site instead of vesting time on this other stuff.

Poter above me also makes a really good point.

[P0LYBIUS]

one more edit- added the timeline along with my commentary on why it should concern more users. i may also change the title, since this has gone beyond MP and into 'selling user's art to blockchain game devs' territory, but i also don't want users to reopen this thread and realize they've already read it emotion_facepalm