Factom (FCT)

Factom

Type	decentralized data integrity protocol
Total supply	Inflationary
Website	https://www.factomprotocol.org/

now-defunct (2-2023)

Basics

• Was focussed on notaries and records
• “In the most condensed sense, Factom helps ensure data integrity. The Factom network does this by allowing hashes of large amounts of data to be stored on secure blockchains, such as those of Bitcoin and Ethereum (though Factom itself is blockchain-agnostic).”
• “Factom attempts to build a generalized proof of publication system for general data. The proof of a chain of data links back to the Bitcoin Blockchain; users need only to have access to the Directory Blocks and the entry blocks of the chains which they care about. Most of the data in Factom can otherwise be ignored by an application. We believe Factom will prove to be essential to the construction of much more complex and useful distributed autonomous applications. Factom will also be useful in creating more secure, tamper proof, trusted computer systems.“
• Had a grant system to further their development.
• "Developed in 2014, the Factom Protocol started as a distributed blockchain framework operated entirely by Factom Inc. By May 2018, Factom operated nodes moved from the central company to numerous Authority Node Operators, of which there are 26 today, including De Facto, the developer of Factom Pro."

Token

• Transparent Presale
• Utility Token
• “Factoids are the token used by Factom creating incentives to support the protocol. Factoids represent the right to obligate the protocol. Anyone holding Factoids can provide access to the protocol by the conversion of Factoids into Entry Credits. Factoids are also payment for work done by the Federated Servers who support the protocol.“

How It Worked

• “Factom is a general purpose data layer, secured by the Bitcoin Blockchain. Users can create their own “chains” of data, We call each data packet entered simply an Entry. Factom places no restriction on what that data might be. While what Factom does is no more complicated than that, how Factom creates a censorship resistant, distributed and autonomous network for this purpose is, admittedly, complicated.”

• “Is Factom primarily about proof of publication, proof of process, or proof of audit?

Factom is about all three. We prove the existence of each entry in a Chain. This is proof of publication. We group all the entries in a Chain which allows them to be enumerated, the order examined, and the validity of each to be determined. This is proof of process. Lastly, a Chain is immutable, so it can be presented at any time. The documents behind the Chain can be provided by the client application’s organization, and independently validated against the chain. This is proof of audit.”

Tech

• Uses the Omni layer
• Not Mineable; “The consensus algorithm Factom uses is faster, cheaper to run, and is more appropriate for a publishing platform. Anchors in Bitcoin make it so that Factom cannot change its own history.”
• Factom has announced the release of Harmony Connect expansion; the base layer protocol that runs on top of Bitcoin was released back in May 2018; Factom Harmony, provides REST APIs to read, write and search Factom blockchain entries with ease as it limits the barriers of entry in adding blockchain technology to application.
• Is planning (5-2019) to implement ZK-snarks.

PegNet

• Are live (21-12-2019) on IDEX. There are now ERC20 wrapped versions of the PegNet pAssets. So on Ethereum. "You can NOT yet deposit ERC20 versions of pAssets onto the PegNet wallet or exchanges that do not support ERC20 pAssets (currently only IDEX)."
• A network of pegged assets. The idea (kickstarted by Paul Snow) is to have tokens pegged to assets (currencies, commodities, other crypto currencies) and be able to instantly convert one kind to another.
• From CoinDesk (22-4-2020):

"PegNet is a decentralized network, built on top of the Factom protocol, where users can trade stablecoins pegged to 32 assets. Besides fiat currencies, there are also digital assets pegged to commodities, such as gold, and other cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether.

The network relies on miners to submit price data, collected from a series of oracles and APIs, to keep stablecoin prices pegged to their fiat equivalents. Each block requires up to 50 data points, and the protocol discards the 25 submissions furthest away from the total average. Most use the 3-4 default sources, but miners are also able to submit their own arbitrary values."

• From this blog update (2-12-2019):

"Today PEG tokens are scarce, but user conversions into and out of PEG make the supply unpredictable. To add predictability to the PEG supply, the PegNet software will allow a total of 5,000 PEG in conversions from pAssets, per 10 minute block. This is done with a proportional approach allowing any user to submit a conversion into PEG and get a pro-rata number of PEG, in the case when users are requesting more than the 5,000 PEG per block limit.

Combined with the existing 5,000 PEG block reward, for the proof of work miners, the PegNet software will see a predictable 10,000 PEG added per block."

• "The current rule (9-2-2020) to be listed on PegNet at all is $100 Million market cap + $5 Million in daily trading volume for a pAsset to be listed."

Stablecoin Peg Gamed

• From CoinDesk (22-4-2020):

"Four mining entities – who together comprised as much as 70 percent of the PegNet hashrate – submitted data that artificially inflated the price of a "pJPY," a stablecoin pegged to the price of Japanese Yen, according to a core developer going by the username "WhoSoup".

Beginning initially with a wallet balance of $11 worth, the group pushed the price of pJPY up to $6.7 million and then transferred it into pUSD – PegNet's USD-linked stablecoin. They then tried (unsuccessfully) to liquidate as much as possible on spot exchanges and distribute the remainder in hundreds of different wallet addresses.

But there are still some unanswered questions. The attacker has since reached out to PegNet and claimed they were only trying to "pentest [penetration test] the network and code logic," to identify potential vulnerabilities and notify core developers.

They have also destroyed all the stablecoins in question, sending them all to the PegNet burn address at roughly 14:00 UTC Tuesday."

Cloudstorage

• “Factom is not intended for Data storage. The prices are projected at ~$1048/GiB.  Factom is for packaging data to be shared on a P2P network. The intent is to make a system that is simultaneously censorship and spam resistant. It is a method for disparate parties to agree on one version of history.”

Roadmap

• In 2019 many people believed Factom to be gone, this AMA talked about what FTC has been doing. Notable projects were a Factom Twitter, Digital ID's, FAT (Factom Asset Tokens), the tokenization protocol on top of Factom and PegNet project (live since Q3 2019). 

Team, partners, etc.

Team

• Kirby, Peter; CEO
• Jack Lu, Cofounded Factom in 2014.
• Deery, Brian; Chief Scientist
• Laurence, Tiana; CMO
• Snow, Paul; Chief Architect and founder
• David A. Johnston; Chairman of the Board at Factom, Inc.
• Nerayoff, Steven; advisor
• Michael Y. core developer
• Prominent community members are: Julian Fletcher Taylor, Devon Katz, Stuart Johnson, Niels Klomp and Maarten Boender
• 20 Apr 2017: “Today Factom has 26 employees, with headquarters in Austin (Tex.), and satellite offices in Sunnyvale (Calif.), Shanghai, Beijing, and London. 75% of its clients are international, and more than 6.5 million entries have been secured with the network so far.”
• Quite some people in their team for the Chinese market. In 5-2019 quite some Dutch people working on the project.

Partners

• “Beginning in January, 2017, the team quietly secured a number of collaborations and partnerships—with iSoftStone (to integrate blockchain tech and smart city solutions for several regions in China), Ancun (to integrate Factom’s blockchain tech with Ancun’s electronic data notarization services), Rongdu Technology (to provide a blockchain backend for Rongdu’s existing fintech software), SmartContract (to give Bitcoin and Ethereum smart contract developers access to Factom data), and DataYes and Intrinio (to verify and audit data from the U.S. and Chinese financial markets, respectively).”
• Factom says that it’s collaborating with Chainlink to give Bitcoin and Ethereum smart contract developers easy access to Factom data. It provides APIs and managed services to build blockchain applications, systems, and processes. Announced: July 2016
• Member of Hyperledger
• Has a partnership with Digital Asset, "the company behind the DAML Smart Contracts framework. They asked us to partner with them for our document- and blockchain API integrations. We will be start anchoring DAML-based Smart Contracts on multiple blockchains, using our Enterprise APIs."
• "Crypto startup Knabu is piloting bank regulatory reporting with Factom, one of the earliest enterprise blockchain companies. It aims to streamline compliance. The London-based firm is launching the 30-day pilot today" (1-11-2019).

Investors

• On Oct. 5, 2016, Factom announced the success of a $4.2 million Series A capital raise, led by billionaire investor Tim Draper. (Draper auspiciously stated afterward: “I believe that the Factom team has the opportunity and the potential to build a company greater than Oracle and Palantir and IBM combined.”)
• In 2017, it raised $8 million from investors including Draper Associates and Overstock.com’s Medici Ventures.
• “On Nov. 18, 2016, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced they had awarded Factom a $500,000 grant “to build a Proof of Concept prototype of a digitized medical record system for individuals living in remote developing areas of the world.” Three days later, Smartrac—the leading provider of radio-frequency identification (RFID) products worldwide—announced they had partnered with Factom to create an integrated document-verification and -authentication solution. And last month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security revealed a second, follow-on grant to Factom designed “to advance the security of digital identity for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.”
• From CoinDesk (2-4-2020):

"Following a board meeting on March 31, Factom Inc. finally told investors it would consider beginning the process of liquidation. As its biggest investor, FastForward said in their announcement that they will now become receiver and will take the lion's share of the company's assets and intellectual property. A timetable for when Factom will eventually be wound up has not been disclosed.

The closure of Factom Inc will not have any impact on the running of the Factom Protocol, said Factom Inc chairman David Johnston.

FastForward, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and has invested in a diverse range of tech startups, entered into a $6 million SAFE with Factom Inc in 2018. In its near-six-year history, Factom raised more than $18 million from investors."

Update 10-4-2020:

"After years of being unable to close a Series B, enterprise blockchain company Factom, Inc. slashed its staff from 10 to just two. The company isn’t going into receivership, however, as its investor, FastForward Innovations, claimed last week, said Factom COO Jay Smith."