An Adoption Focused Wallet & Token for the Binance DEX
Tags: Ethereum Blockchain

This document is designed to be a birds-eye view of the Equal project, as it presents as both a ‘one-stop’ non-custodial wallet (user controlled assets) and also an exploration of the value and network design of the EQL token.

As an overriding thought, the project ethos is “blockchain made simple” as it aims to remove the barriers to entry and soften the learning curve for new crypto users.

It is also worth noting that Equal did not seed using an ICO, and as such has been self-funded and supported privately by those in their community.

While not ground-breaking, I think this is important when looking at the crypto space as a whole, where founders are often unwilling to support their projects with their own capital. This is a shift from the traditional start-up culture, made most famous from Silicon Valley and Shenzhen.

The Next Iteration Crypto Wallet

Equal will not only reach feature-parity with other current web-based wallet offerings such as MetaMask (over one million users) but surpass it and become the next iteration in web3 web-based wallets.

What does this mean in practice?

Intuitive UX, automatic gas-rates, no central authority and seamless interaction with the Ethereum & Binance blockchains (access to dApp marketplaces, and decentralized exchanges — “DEX’s”).

In an earlier medium post written by the project, they compare MetaMask to Netscape and the speak about the important role that it played in the development of modern browsers.

Equal as such is the next evolution of web-based wallets & to continue the metaphor would be the equivalent of Google Chrome as a direct comparison.

The Token

The reason the project is called ‘Equal’ is to do with the central ethos of the token, and by extension the method of how it was minted.

The EQL token was initially airdropped for in December 2017!

One reason for this beyond the obvious fact that they did not ICO was to create an equal distribution of currency and avoid the pitfalls that other projects have experienced of having “whales” effectively control the token price and in some cases decision making of the project by gaining heavily discounted prices for investors that had early access to private rounds.

Airdropping the token was a way that the project would be judged on its merits; ie the quality of the development rather than how much was raised.

Most importantly though they didn’t need to do it, so they didn’t!

But egalitarianism aside, the tactic had some incredible community building advantages.

For starters, it was fully subscribed by the capped number of 5000 participants.

This means that overnight they had an engaged community that was energized to interact with beta versions of the wallet and of course, promote the awareness of the project.

Token Development

The EQL token was originally built on Ethereum and is in the process of being migrated to the Binance Chain and BEP2-standard.

The migration process will occur in the Equal Wallet, displaying Equal Wallet’s unique chain migration capabilities to all current and future token holders. The Equal Wallet will integrate Binance Coin and the subsequent Binance Chain. This will allow for users to hold the new EQL token in BEP-2 format in the Equal Wallet.

While this is a monumental achievement for the project it does have one obvious downside from my point of view, and that is to do with token design that was not able to be reproduced on the Binance chain.

In the original vision of the token on Ethereum, it had a deflationary burn fee.

In a nutshell, as the token was used a small amount of EQL (250) as a condition of the smart contract. Instead of this fee going back to the network it was ‘burnt’, or in other words destroyed completely.

From an economic POV this steadily decreased the total supply and in turn users and investors would experience predictable growth as their share of tokens relative to available supply increases.

TL;DR: If the supply of the token goes down, then the value of existing tokens goes up — this design proposes a positive feedback loop (not dissimilar in construct to what SN proposed and implemented with Bitcoin).

I thought this was a really elegant design mechanism!

But alas, it required adjustable smart contracts to execute and Binance doesn’t use smart contracts.

Shame, but a small price to pay all things considered.

So what does it do?

Become the official payment mechanism for all Equal products and services

Provide fee reduction on Swapping Exchange.

Used to unlock premium features within the wallet

Used by DAPP Developers to market on the Equal DAPP Store

Access to Equal Pro Version

The Importance of DEXs & Partnership with Binance DEX.

Centralized exchanges hold undue power over users. The current mechanics allow them to engage in many of the regressive practices that cryptocurrency fundamentally opposes in the fiat world; primarily in the form of unilateral fee structures and vulnerable security practices relating to data and the assets themselves.

What use are “decentralized currencies” if we are still