Native is a new Ethereum-based platform that is using Native Platform Tokens (NTV). It is a community of communities that can create their own currencies and manage their own resources.

Overview

The Native communities are composed of curators and members. Curators are the administrators of the community while members are the users. Members have the power to replace curators if deemed necessary.

The ecosystem is comprised of Native tokens (NTV) and the community tokens. NTV serves as the base token for all tokens in Native while community tokens are those that are local to the communities. For example, community A has token A1 that can be used within community A, B1 token of community B that can be used within community B only, and so on.

The system works by finding and joining communities that care or value the same things as you do. Once you get into the community, you start supporting or funding projects that it does. This is where you can start tracking the value of your token while helping to build your community stronger. You also participate in decision making as to which project you think is more beneficial and should get the proper funding. This is where your vote counts. Once the project is on the roll, you can claim tasks, complete them and earn money.

If there is no existing community that has the same interest as you do, you can create the community and start building it. As published on Native's Whitepaper, there are three core benefits of starting a community.

1. Raising capital through token issuance, replacing traditional fundraising models such as banks, VC and crowdfunding.
2. The ability to make collective decisions through the platform polling and escrow features.
3. The recognition of, and ability to, redeem value within global framework.

Unlike other cryptocurrency platforms that have their one currency, the concept of Native is unique that it is all about different communities creating their own and unique currency. Unique as it is, I believe there are pros and cons with this kind of setup.

Pros

Native provides a platform for like-minded people to come together, regardless of geographical location, and move to single direction with their purpose and interests. This enables and empowers people to be autonomous which will give self-boost and better solidarity within their community.

Having a local currency will limit the circulation of “money” within a community. Because the currency cannot be used anywhere else, this will create better preferences to local businesses and thus contain the growth within such community instead of giving the resources to other communities. This will give the community a more solid focus on their “local” economic growth.

Cons

As they say, no man is an island, and so does a community. Communities have to co-exist and be in harmony with each other. In the trading world, communities exchange products. Use of local community currencies is not applicable in this case thus the need to exchange for a base currency that is applicable to all. That is NTV for the case of Native platform. Though it may not be a big deal, there is this challenge of middle-term exchange of currencies instead of direct “foreign” exchange. To clarify that, think of communities A and B wanting to trade products. Community A has to buy NTV before it can buy from community B and community B has to exchange NTV to its local currency before it can be used within the community.

Weighing the pros and the cons, I believe the pros are more promising that can make the cons negligible.

On a more macro perspective, I think the centralized exchanging of NTV to local currencies can become bigger challenge when more and more communities are created. Let us imagine millions of communities globally have come to Native. On Native’s Whitepaper, it mentions about base currency I also wonder how the base currency will be determined.

At an individual level, this is another good platform to socialize with people of your same interest and at the same time have the opportunity to earn by completing tasks.

Use case

To date, there are only six pilot communities in the platform. As it continues to grow, I believe there will be communities for customer service and social responsibility or “reaching out” purposes. These are the communities that I will be much interested to work with where I can contribute my knowledge and at the same time learn something new, plus the opportunity to earn.

As many entrepreneurs are also exploring opportunities for people to have better financial freedom while having better quality of life, Native will provide more options to have such quality life they aspire.

This is an entry to @originalworks’s Sponsored Writing Contest: Native. Visit the link to know more of the contest details.

Twitter link: https://twitter.com/macoollete/status/1049634564220452867

native2018
nativetwitter

---

All graphics on this post were taken from Native website.

---