Fetch.ai (FET)

Fetch.ai

Total supply	1,152,997,575
Website	https://fetch.ai/

 Basics

• Started in: 2017
• Mainnet release: 19-12-2019
• Based in: Cambridge
• From Binance Research (10-8-2019):

"Fetch.AI is a "decentralized digital representation of the real world in which autonomous software agents perform useful economic work". To do so, it relies heavily on Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)."

• From their 'technical introduction (2-2019):

"Fetch is a decentralised digital representation of the world in which autonomous software agents perform useful economic work. This means that they can perform tasks, such as delivering data or providing services, and are rewarded with a digital currency for their efforts — the Fetch Token. These agents can be thought of as digital entities: life-forms that are able to make decisions on their own behalf as well as on behalf of their stakeholders (individuals, private enterprises and governments for example). Fetch's digital world is exposed to agents via its Open Economic Framework (OEF) and is underpinned by unique smart ledger technology to deliver high performance, low cost transactions. The ledger delivers useful proof-of-work that builds market intelligence and trust over time — growing the value of the network as it is used. Fetch can be neatly interfaced to existing systems with minimal effort, allowing it to take advantage of the old economy whilst building the new: plug existing data in to Fetch and watch markets spontaneously form from the bottom up."

History

• From their FAQ (8-6-2020):

"Fetch.ai was founded in early 2017, following a merger of two independent companies, itzMe.AI and uVue. itzMe.AI was operating in the field of social networks while uVue was involved in developing control systems for autonomous vehicles."

Token

Launch

• From their FAQ (8-6-2020):

"Fetch.ai held a public token sale on Binance Launchpad on 25 February 2019. Due to overwhelming public demand, $6m was raised in just 22 seconds."

Token allocation

• From Binance Research (10-8-2019). The foundation and the team both got 20%. And they used their funds as followed:

"As of 1st December 2018, Fetch.AI has used approximately 85% of SAFT funds according to the allocations below:

• 10% Partnerships
• 10% Marketing
• 25% Team
• 45% Development
• 5% Professional services
• 5% Misc"

Utility

• From Binance Research (10-8-2019):

"The Fetch.AI (FET) token is used as the value exchange on the Fetch.AI network. It is the payment method for all transaction fees, and also a refundable method of registering on the ledger, and can be staked to secure the overall network.

Fetch.AI tokens can be used for many purposes, the largest six of which are:

• Ability to connect agents and nodes to the network: FET is an access deposit token that acts as a form of stake to demonstrate desire to behave appropriately. It modulates the ability for bad actors to flood the network with undesirable nodes or agents due to the escalating cost of doing so. Fetch.AI are performing modelling and simulations on their testnets (both public and private) during the first half of 2019 to determine what this stake should be.
• Value exchange between agents: The Fetch.AI token is required in order to allow for two agents, regardless of where they are, to perform a value exchange. The Fetch.AI token is infinitely divisible, thereby supporting transactions that have very low monetary value, but in aggregate provide new and profound level of insight and opportunity.
• Access to search and discovery, and advertisement services: Fetch.AI tokens are needed to access, view and interact with the Fetch.AI search engine. This is a space optimized for autonomous digital entities, providing dynamic and autonomous price setting and negotiation.
• Access to Fetch's multi-dimensional digital world: Fetch.AI tokens allow agents to view and explore its digital space geographically, semantically or economically. Some of these detailed views involve considerable computing time and communications between many nodes. These more resource intensive operations will require more tokens. Fetch's AI and ML constantly restructure this world to optimize each agent's individual view.
• Ability to access and develop ledger-based AI/ML algorithms: The Fetch.AI token enables development of and access to a broad range of machine learning and artificial intelligence tasks that are available on the ledger. These may be Fetch-developed primary services such as trust and prediction models, or they may be large-scale independently developed services for network users.
• For exchange into Fetch's operational fuel: Operation costs in Fetch.AI are decoupled from the Fetch.AI token in a similar way to that of "gas" on the Ethereum network, but with additional functionality designed to increase the stability of such a fuel and look at addressing issues associated with high and low-velocity economies. Fetch's operational fuel allows access to processor time for contract execution and services for agents."

Tech

• Whitepaper can be found here (2-2019).
• Code can be viewed here (8-6-2020).
• Programming language used:

Transaction Details

• Capacity (TPS):
• Latency:

How it works

• From Binance Research (10-8-2019):

"Fetch.AI uses a combination of Proof-of-Stake ("PoS") coupled with a protocol to perform work to deliver consensus. New blocks are minted through the PoS protocol with the transaction order being determined by the work carried out between two blocks. This work is recorded on a directed acyclic graph (DAG) that grows between the blocks. The DAG is notarized by the blockchain which removes the need for a coordinator. A leader or committee of leaders is elected in each block epoch using a decentralized random beacon that is based on a threshold signature scheme."

• From their FAQ (8-6-2020):

"Useful Proof of Work (µPoW™) is a mechanism for reaching consensus in the network by performing computation that delivers results that are useful either to the network itself or to individual users of the network. It reclaims this processing power to deliver a decentralized super-computer that provides trust information, the prediction model and the ability to perform public and private distributed computing, allocating computational work according to capacity. Such work is delivered as packages that can be broken down and distributed across the network’s nodes for execution, with the cost of verifying that the work was done being trivial in comparison to the cost of doing the work itself. Fetch.ai have built a unique consensus system to store the results of µPoW™ and a high-performance, machine-learning oriented virtual machine to perform the computing itself."

Governance

• From their website (19-12-2019):

"A larger, more decentralised operation of the network is just part of this process. We will be publishing exciting details of our future plans for network governance. We’re building a technology that ultimately will be owned, maintained and developed by all of the network’s users, and we need a governance framework in place that ensures everyone who utilises our technology gets a say in how it matures in the future."

Roadmap

• Can be found here (24-2-2019). Update (8-6-2020).
• From their website (19-12-2019):

"2020 is the year when we switch focus from laying down the foundations, to a new phase of refinements, performance increases, integration of new innovations, and higher level work that provides deeper, richer application possibilities. It’s also when we purposefully work towards decentralisation: integrating our novel minimal agency proof-of-stake with unpermissioned delegation system fully into the mainnet will be a major delivery in the first half of the year, for example, and it’ll gradually merge the validator staking auction mechanism you may have seen into the main, native network itself.

A larger, more decentralised operation of the network is just part of this process. We will be publishing exciting details of our future plans for network governance. We’re building a technology that ultimately will be owned, maintained and developed by all of the network’s users, and we need a governance framework in place that ensures everyone who utilises our technology gets a say in how it matures in the future.

Usability is a big part of the first half of 2020, and there’s a lot happening. From documentation to tools, we’re going to be working hard to improve everything that we already have, as well as delivering a stack of new things. One of the things we’ll be doing early in 2020 is “closing the loop” on our ERC20 to native FET conversion tool, so you can convert back to ERC20 from native. We’ll also be delivering hardware wallet support and web-based extensions to allow such things to be integrated into web sites. It means that soon, our native network will have the same things you rely on day-to-day on Ethereum, such as the important functionality that tools such as MetaMask, MyEtherWallet, Infura and Etherscan deliver. And as you’d expect, all of our tools will be entirely open source, so others can build on them for their projects and applications."

Audits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].

Competition

• From their FAQ (8-6-2020):

"We don’t believe there is currently a scalable smart ledger project which allows virtual worlds to be deployed and prediction models to be built.

An incomplete list of projects that operate in a similar space, and that could complement or compete with Fetch.ai is shown below:

1. Hashgraph (lacks an inherent intelligence built into the ledger)
2. IOTA (IoT data exchange but no intelligence)
3. Ocean Protocol (a marketplace for data and algorithms)
4. SingularityNet (AGI deployment claims but not really sure how)
5. Satori (platform on hashgraph ledger/protocol which does not inherently include any intelligence features)
6. Neurochain — we do not have enough information to draw a conclusion at this stage, but we watch it with interest.

Our approach is to build our framework on top of our own ‘Smart Ledger’ from the bottom up, with intelligence built into it from the start, and with the tools to create and refine a collective intelligence, and deliver it to all of its users. The autonomous agents that live in the Fetch.ai digital world are able to adapt dynamically to deliver or receive value . For more details about our unique network, please read our technical introduction."

Team, Funding, Partnerships, etc.

Team

• Full team can be found here (6-8-2020).

Partners 

• From their FAQ (8-6-2020):

"Fetch.ai is working with a growing number of partners. We are excited to announce agreements with several more in the coming months, but the ones we have discussed publicly include:

Blockchain for Europe: Alongside Ripple, NEM and EMURGO/Cardano we founded the association in December 2018 to represent blockchain originating organisations at a European level.

Trusted IoT Alliance: TIoTA was founded to support the creation of a secure, scalable and interoperable IoT ecosystem and includes major corporations such as Bosch, Cisco and Siemens among its members.

T-Labs: In May 2019 we announced a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with T-Labs, the R&D unit of Deutsche Telekom.

Decentralized metal exchange consortium: In October 2019 we announced a partnership with Turkish steelmakers including Baştuğ Metallurgy to develop the first AI-powered decentralized metals exchange and recorded the historic first trade on the exchange. The project received an additional boost when we announced a partnership with Grey Swan Digital a few weeks later. Fetch.ai and Grey Swan Digital will integrate their platforms in order to offer Smart Market Making and Smart Margin Lending.

Cambridge University: In December 2019 we announced a partnership with Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing to develop supply chain use cases with AI multi-agent systems and our next-generation blockchain.

Ankr: The partnership, agreed in December 2019, will see Fetch.ai further grows its network. Ankr will provide a node hosting application which enables users to run Fetch.ai master nodes."