What is TEKKON, the Web3 product that is taking Japan by storm?

[BlakeCB]

Recently, a Web3 product called TEKKON caught the attention of the BBC. Multiple channels in Asia covered the product, and the Web3 project, which had not received much attention in the crypto world, came out in an unexpected way.

TEKKON is a Web3 product popular in Japan. The product is operated by the Whole Earth Foundation and has issued its own WEC token. It now has more than 130,000 users worldwide.

Social contribution Web3 game
In TEKKON's Twitter introduction, the project uses an interesting concept to define itself: socially contributing Web3 games. How does this project contribute to society?

When the player takes a picture of the eligible infrastructure in the real world city, the game rewards are awarded, and the rewards are distributed using the game's native token WEC.

Specifically, the player needs to photograph damaged infrastructure (such as electricity poles). This infrastructure information will then be shared with the municipal authorities and infrastructure companies in your city. This helps relevant parties to obtain information about damaged infrastructure and make timely repairs.

When players create a TEKKON account, they will receive a pet dog NFT for free. The in-game rewards earned allow the dog to grow, and the in-game rewards can be redeemed for LinePay points. LinePay is a payment feature supported by the popular SMS App in Japan, and each LinePay point can be used against 1 yen at the time of payment.

There are other ways to earn rewards besides taking photos in person. In order to filter out invalid data, infrastructure photos uploaded by players need to be reviewed by other players, and players who do review can receive in-game rewards.

Is the vision too ideal for the real world?
Unlike previous Web3 applications where the value is entirely on-chain, TEKKON is a Web3 application that works in the real world. The team believes that this application has a practical and positive impact on society.

In Japan, for example, there are about 15 million sewerage-related Wells, of which about 3 million are past their useful life. But the maintenance department can't keep up with the latest developments of these sewage Wells.

With the TEKKON app, citizens managed to capture photos of all 10,500 wellheads in Tokyo's Shibuya district via their smartphones in just three days. If we continue at this rate, we will be able to photograph all 15 million cases. And at any time according to its latest developments, timely maintenance of the infrastructure. TEKKON expects such timely maintenance to reduce the amount invested in facility upgrades by 30 to 40 percent.

In the long term, through the daily activities of TEKKON players, TEKKON will have data on various types of infrastructure around the world. The data it collects will have beneficial value for infrastructure maintenance around the world.

In this simple economic model, how does TEKKON earn revenue to support the payment of rewards to players?

The data TEKKON obtains allows the infrastructure company to optimize its maintenance efficiency, so this data is valuable to the infrastructure company, and TEKKON sells it to the other side. The amount paid by the infrastructure company is the source of TEKKON's income.

To this end, they also made a rough calculation: there are about 7.9 billion people in the world, and the number of households is about 3 billion. Assuming that each household spends 50,000 yen per year on infrastructure-related expenses, the annual amount of funds in this area is about 150 trillion yen. If 10% of this investment can be used to improve the efficiency of infrastructure maintenance through large-scale adoption of TEKKON in the future, the economy size of about 15 trillion yen would be the upper limit of the potential size of the economic system built by TEKKON.

But were TEKKON's expectations utopian from the start? At current exchange rates, 50,000 yen is about $350. If such a scale of value input is used as a benchmark for estimation, is it unrealistic for rich countries?

According to the United Nations, 10% of the world's population - 700 million people - still live in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than $1.90 a day. Even among those with jobs, 8% of employed workers and their families still live in extreme poverty.

And even in regions that are not poor, there are many areas where infrastructure investment is inadequate. The benchmark for infrastructure spending per household may be too idealistic. A large number of developing countries have a shortage of infrastructure investment due to financial, policy, administrative procedures, judicial and other reasons. TEKKON's theoretical maximum market size should ultimately be far from its estimate.

The WEC ecosystem
WEC is TEKKON's native token. According to the official description, this ecosystem consists of four actors: citizens, the Whole Earth Foundation, infrastructure companies (or public institutions), and other companies.

Founded in late 2017 by former Qualcomm, Intel and Dropbox engineers, Solana Solana is a single-chain entrusted proof-of-stake protocol that focuses on providing scalability without reducing decentralization or security. At the heart of Solana's extended solution is a distributed clock called Proof-of-History (PoH), designed to solve the time problem where there is no single trusted time source in a distributed network. By using a verifiable delay feature, PoH allows each node to generate a timestamp locally using SHA256 calculations. This eliminates the need to broadcast timestamps across the entire network, improving overall network efficiency. SOL is a native token of the Solana blockchain. Solana uses the entrusted proof-of-stake consensus algorithm to incentivize token holders to verify transactions. As part of Solana's security design, all expenses will be paid in SOL and burned off, reducing the total supply. This deflationary SOL mechanism incentivizes more token holders to participate, thereby improving network security. See more networks.

But its token economics design is different from common crypto projects. At issue, the total supply of WEC was fixed at 300 million. However, after migrating to Solana, it has been changed to a variable quantity and is not explicitly stated. "The exact amount will be determined by the foundation based on the future use of the platform, the need to maintain business operations and other factors," the official said.

The TEKKON app has a built-in wallet system, but its design is relatively closed. The game has two types of points: bonus points and binding points. Bonus points can only be spent within the game and will be exchanged for WEC tokens if transferred from the app to another EOA wallet. At present, the WEC has planned the pledge scheme, but the specific rules are still under discussion.

From the point of view of its mechanism design, the model of this project is more closed and centralized operation. However, its unique real-world utility has indeed played a "circle" influence, which may be a new crypto entrepreneurial route. Where will TEKKON and WEC go in the future?