Announcing The ERC-20 Transporter — Now Anyone Can Send ERC-20 Tokens Without Holding ETH

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BokkyPooBah’s Token Teleportation Service Smart Contract

While the Gaze Coin Network is not ready for prime time yet, its CTO, Bok Khoo, “BokkyPooBah” has developed an ERC-20 teleportation service that enables users to send ERC-20 tokens without holding ETH. Designed to solve a problem for Virtual Reality users who don’t hold cryptocurrencies, the POC could have a range of uses for other token-based applications where participants have previously had to hold ETH to use them

What is a Token Teleportation Service Smart Contract?

Working on a project to integrate a VR world with the Ethereum blockchain, where the system measures “gaze” in the virtual world and uses GazeCoin tokens (GZE) to facilitate micropayments between content producers, advertisers and consumers, I tried implementing this on the Bitcoin network several years ago, but it had proved too hard.

I knew from my experience with Ethereum that the easiest way to create a cryptographically-secure tradeable token, was on the Ethereum network, where an ERC-20 (Ethereum token standard) contracts can be deployed quickly and cheaply. But that wasn’t all that was needed to make using tokens in VR environments a great experience.

Users wandering around the GazeCoin virtual world can earn and spend GZE. The problem is that less that 1% of the world’s population are users of cryptocurrencies, so a large proportion of VR users will not hold them.

As a result, BokkyPooBah’s Token Teleportation Service Smart Contract (BTTS) is a proof-of-concept for a solution that will allow non-crypto users to use crypto-tokens. Details can be found at (BTTS) GitHub repository.

The GazeCoin GZE token contract will be built with BTTS technology so it’s the best example of its practical use.

Users create an account and then backup the 12 or 24 word mnemonic seed phrase. The mnemonic seed phrase will allow for the creation of one or more Ethereum addresses within their wallet. Users can then hold GZE tokens in these Ethereum addresses.

The GZE token contract will be built with smart contract functions that allows the user’s address to sign instructions allowing another Ethereum address to transfer GZE tokens on the user’s behalf. This optional functionality is built on top of the an ERC20 token contract, so normal Ethereum ERC20 token transfers will be the fallback position for users.

The user’s wallet will craft the instruction and use the private key to cryptographically sign the instruction. This instruction is then sent to the BTTS service provider and they then execute the token transfer on the user’s behalf.

The user pays for transaction fees in GZE tokens that the BTTS service provider receives. This is to compensate for the ETH transaction fee that the BTTS service provider pays to execute the user’s GZE crypto-token transfer. Technical details of how BTTS technology works is summarised in How It Works.

If the user chooses to, they can still transfer GZE tokens while directly paying ETH transaction fees. BTTS is just an optional add-on technology to ease the process of GZE token transfers. BTTS is the first of many solutions to ease the onboarding of users onto the GazeCoin platform and one that I’m sure other developers will find useful for their own applications.

Building A Decentralised Immersive Economy

As we start moving GazeCoin towards a decentralised immersive economy, where fans and audiences move from one decentralised world to another and our transport system allows them to exchange tokens from one to the other, as well as purchase digital goods, the importance of the BTTS protocol becomes even more significant.

Don’t forget to check out the source code and documentation in GitHub or jump on the Telegram if you have any questions for me.

About The Author

Bok Khoo, “BokkyPooBah” is an experienced ethereum developer and Gaze Coin CTO. Bokky built the CryptoDerivatives.Market decentralised trust-less ether/token exchange contract market in November 2016, becoming familiar with some of the issues of interacting with smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and started searching for solutions.