FOAM (blockchain)

Foam is a blockchain software development company building an open protocol for decentralized geospatial data markets built on top of Ethereum. The company is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York City, New York and was founded in 2015 by Ryan John King, Kristoffer Josefsson, and Katya Zavyalova.

The FOAM Proof of Location Protocol allows for autonomous geospatial services through the secure coordination of radio beacons (called Zone Anchors) that verify that an event or user is at a certain time and place. Zone Anchors are FOAM's distributed network of radio beacons with radio transceivers which communicate with each other using a Byzantine Fault tolerant clock synchronization protocol to create accurate and synchronized clocks. Zone Anchors are incentivized through the use of the FOAM cryptocurrency token. When enough Zone Anchors are communicating with each other they create a Zone that maintains a quorum on time and space, and can begin to offer location services that are enforced through smart contract safety deposits. Validators perform triangulations and fraud proofs to verify locations within Zones in exchange for transaction fees.

FOAM Token Functionality

1. Add and Curate Geographic Points of Interest

The FOAM Spatial Index Visualizer allows Cartographers to participate in interactive TCR POIs on a map. Users can add points to the map, validate new candidates and verify the map by visiting real world locations. The FOAM Token Curated Registry unlocks mapping in a secure and permissionless fashion and allows locations to be ranked and maintained by token balances. Users can deposit FOAM Tokens into POIs on the map to increase attention those POIs might receive.

2. Signal for Zone Incentivisation

A further potential use of the FOAM Token by Cartographers is to stake their FOAM Tokens to Signal. Signaling is a mechanism designed to allow Cartographers to incentivize the expansion and geographic coverage of the FOAM network. To Signal, a Cartographer stakes FOAM Tokens to a Signaling smart contract by reference to a particular area. These staked tokens serve as indicators of demand, and are proportionate to (i) the length of time staking (the earlier, the better), and (ii) the number of tokens staked (the less well-served areas, the better). In the context of the contingent Dynamic Proof of Location concept (described further in the Product Whitepaper), these indicators are the weighted references that determine the spatial mining rewards.

3. Contribute to Potential Secure Location Services as Zone Anchor or Verifier

The FOAM protocol may allow users to provide work and secure localization services and location verification for smart contracts and be rewarded for their own efforts with new FOAM Tokens in the form of mining rewards. Devices and real world contracts can be programmed to designate attestations and track interactions and transactions on the map. With the addition of necessary radio hardware by individual users and the grass roots expansion of the FOAM network, it may be possible for location status to be proved in a different manner. Location could be proved through a time synchronization protocol that would ensure continuity of a distributed clock, whereby specialized hardware could synchronize nodes’ clocks over radio to provide location services in a given area. As explained further in the following paragraph, this ‘Dynamic Proof of Location’ is contingent on a number of factors outside of Foamspace’s control.