Token Lifecycle on the Internet Computer

Developers
1

I’ve read through many of the token discussions in this forum and looked at various existing projects and proposals, especially at EXT, WTC, XTC (from Stoic & Dank).

I’m still trying to figure out how users would interact with tokens on the medium-term on dfinity.
My goal is a token lifecycle that can be implemented right now and allows both users and canisters to exchange tokens.

Imagine a classic IC based game of rock, paper and scissors between two users. A canister acts as the trustless intermediary, holds the wagers of both players and determines the winner.

As of now, the most useful approach seems to me:

  1. Both users need to buy ICP on an external market like coinbase.

  2. In order to allow the rock-paper-scissors canister to handle the wagers, ICP needs to be converted to cycles. But as users cannot hold cycles themselves, the cycles need to be wrapped so that the winner can withdraw his profit. (Receiving ICP in Canister - #18 by stephenandrews)

  3. After the canister has determined the winner, he/she can transfer the profit in WTC for example. Even though the WTC cannot be converted to ICP, it can be converted back to cycles and therefore will be valuable to others.

Am I getting something completely wrong here or am I on the right track? Any comment appreciated :slight_smile: .

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Right track. This is my take - cycles as a currency works in theory and do have value, but there’s no market to sell them to devs yet, especially since you can convert ICP directly to cycles at the pegged rate really easily (e.g. on StoicWallet this is an option - enter the amount of ICP and your canister, and it will mint cycles and send to your canister instantly).

We would need a market that would sell the cycles at a tiny discount, but we are still limited by ICP restrictions which makes such a market currently impossible IMO. We really need to get those restrictions lifted as soon as it is safe to do so. By the time this happens tho, we can just use ICP if the dapp doesn’t care about having it pegged to a set value.

I think we will see greater usage of WTC/XTC once ICP restrictions are lifted and a market exists. Really looking forward to this!

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