The idea behind Topl is simple: by building an open capital infrastructure tailor-made for developing markets, investment returns and their economic impact can be greatly improved. Topl's investment protocol is designed to help investors overcome the numerous barriers that suppress the flow of capital into developing regions, thereby raising investment to levels appropriate to the vast potential of these economies.
We believe that responsible investment in young, innovative, and locally-based companies is among the most effective drivers of economic growth and long-term social impact. This is exactly what Topl seeks to enable.
Topl is committed to providing a secure, accessible, and powerful method to invest anywhere in the world. Guided by this aim, we’ve focused on developing these key features.
Topl’s investment platform connects companies and investors through profit or revenue sharing agreements, better aligning the interests of businesses and investors. Then to reduce friction and maximize returns, contracts can be settled in Polys, Topl's native currency, or with tokenized assets.
All participants earn a score based on investment outcomes. This score, informed by past behavior and Topl's prediction markets, allows investors to avoid fraud and gives honest and effective businesses a basis to earn improved terms for the future.
Polys, Topl's native currency, are backed by an array of commodities and utilities, ensuring value-stability. Because the Poly derives its value in this way, there’s no need to rely on one nation’s monetary policy, making it ideal for cross-border investment.
Polys as well as Arbits, the Topl staking token, will both be available as ERC20 tokens on Ethereum and other blockchains. The ability to move tokens between these different markets and Topl will be handled through off-chain cryptographic transactions.
To accommodate the complex needs of real-world markets, we enable anonymous investment agreements to coexist with the need for public financial disclosures by combining an encrypted public bulletin and non-linkable transactions.
History alone can’t provide the complete risk profile of an investment. So Topl employs prediction markets to incorporate additional information into our reputation scores, rewarding experts and local partners for their contributions to the system.
Topl is more than just a cryptocurrency, an exchange, or a database of reputable investment opportunities. It's a complete investment platform, a single solution that enables investments to be vetted, deals negotiated, contracts executed, and funds transferred. While every investment on the Topl platform is unique, here's a simple example to get started.
A business (or Producer) seeking capital may use Topl’s blockchain platform to find an investment partner. The Producer publishes the requested amount along with proposed terms, including what's to be produced, project location, and profit share, through the peer-to-peer blockchain network to be viewed by potential Investors.
After an investment proposal has been submitted, potential Investors may view the proposal and summary information regarding the Producer. If an Investor believes they may be interested in financing the project, they submit their signature to the Producer, indicating interest. The Producer can then decide to accept or reject the overture and negotiations may begin.
Once the Producer and Investor have reached an agreement for their venture, only one additional step is required. To facilitate the disbursement of funds and handle the sale of the assets produced, a third entity known as a Hub serves as an intermediary. A Hub, most often chosen for its proximity to the Producer, acts as an essential link between financial transactions on the blockchain and the movement of real goods.
On the Topl platform, transfers and balances are denominated either in Polys, the platform’s native cryptocurrency, or in asset tokens, representing physical commodities or utility production. A signed and submitted contract proposal enters into force only with the transfer of the appropriate number of Polys from the Investor into escrow administered by the Hub. Once funded, the Hub dispenses these Polys to the Producer.
After receiving the funds, the Producer begins work on satisfying the contract. Along with a schedule for fulfillment, the contract specifies either one-time or periodic delivery of production to the Hub. The use of the Hub in this function serves a dual purpose: to provide the Producer with a streamlined mechanism to offload commodity assets and to allow the Investor to remain confident in the fulfillment of the contract.
After the Producer completes delivery, which must be confirmed by the Hub, the contract is considered fulfilled. At this time, the Hub dispenses asset tokens to the Producer and Investor based on the profit share dictated in the contract. Finally, the state of the blockchain reflects this fulfilled and paid contract, and the reputation scores of all involved parties are updated to reflect the outcome of the contract.
This is intended to be a forward-looking perspective on the expected milestones for development of the Topl network. These are subject to minor changes as implementation moves forward.
The first draft of our whitepaper, discussing the economic details and technical overview of the project, is made publicly viewable.
First testnet client is released for early evaluation of networking, security, and functionality.
Updated testnet client made available, and bootstrapping nodes will always be up. Transfer, initial consensus protocol, and basic investment flow can be evaluated.
Information regarding the future sale of Arbits — such as schedule, preliminary terms, and process — is disseminated
Network testers and those who discover network vulnerabilities or flaws will begin being rewarded with Arbits that will be distributed in the genesis block.
First draft of the yellowpaper is released detailing early technical specifications of the network — protocol, contract structures, and governance and reputation protocol.
Development of additional functionality halts. Focus shifts to further security testing, code review, and client platform support.
First round of prospective businesses and capital are committed to a large-scale trial of the system.
The mainnet is launched for trial investments to begin. Arbits are distributed according to initial sale results and distribution allotments.
The initial set of investments made through the Topl network begins to see fulfillment.
Hubs not directly associated with Topl begin servicing investment contracts through the platform.
Meet the group behind the technical and logistical development of the Topl blockchain and platform.
Head of strategy and financial engineering, Chris leads the design of the Topl platform. He obtained degrees in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy from Rice University. During his time in college, Chris performed multidisciplinary research focused on emergent phenomena in complex systems and developed the core economic theories that inspired Topl's development. He has a deep interest in the application of new technologies to economic and financial problems and is motivated by the potential for new economic systems to improve standards of living around the world.
Zihe loves building things. Before Topl, he developed an outdoor computer vision system capable of detecting parking spots at 99% accuracy. He has applied his Rice University electrical engineering degree to gain valuable hardware and software design experience spanning consumer electronics, machine learning, and DevOps. Zihe co-developed smart contracts that handled over 1000 tps on a private chain running a modified version of go-ethereum. He is interested in seeing how the first production-backed cryptocurrency will evolve and change the way people think of digital assets in a world of increased automation and demand for higher returns.
Self-taught in C programming from a young age, Matt combined his coding interests with his love of mathematics to earn a degree in Computational & Applied Mathematics at Rice University. He has worked on secure and distributed systems projects for the last 3 years on a variety of platforms, including developing and refining NIZK proofs for the JVM-based reference implementation of the STAR-Vote electronic voting system and building smart contracts in Solidity for retail payments. As a Topl blockchain developer, he is now applying his cryptographic and game-theoretic inclinations to build out a novel, multi-actor blockchain in Scala.
As a senior graduate student in the Killian Research Group, Jim manages the quantum degenerate atomic strontium apparatus; one of only three such experiments in the world. Jim's work focuses on the ultracold regime dominated by quantum mechanics where the search for new phenomena and novel states of matter can be explored. As a physicist, Jim has a unique, and ever growing, toolbox of skills that allows him to shrewdly approach problems while maintaining perspective of the overall goal. This holistic approach makes Jim as comfortable debugging code or troubleshooting a feedback circuit as he is developing a plan to study the underlying quantum physics of magnetism and superconductivity.
After solidifying a love for programming in his high school robotics team, Nicholas went on to graduate from the University of Houston with a degree in computer science. His projects range from web development, to computer vision and graphics, to virtual reality. After reading the seminal Bitcoin whitepaper shortly after it was released, he has kept an eye on the burgeoning cryptocurrency market and is now working with Topl to help bring out the full potential of blockchain technology.
Reach out to us if you have any questions or thoughts on what we're doing.
As an open-source project, we value contributions and would love for you to join us in this effort! Don't hesitate to give us your thoughts on improvements or to tell us how you could help.