IMPORTANT: Auctions for XYO World do not begin until August 25, 2020. If you are viewing this article before that date – save the date and return to world.xyo.network and then head to the auctions!
If you're not familiar with cryptocurrency and blockchain, you might be wondering what we mean when we talk about a geotoken or NFT when we talk about XYO World. There are some key differences between NFTs and utility tokens.
Utility tokens on the Ethereum blockchain are meant to be used like real life tokens. You can exchange currency to buy them – in this case, Ethereum cryptocurrency – and then the tokens can be used to serve a function. Laundry tokens wash your clothes, arcade tokens let you play, and XYO tokens allow the trade of location heuristics. These tokens are called ERC-20.
XYO tokens were first sold in May of 2018, so they've been around a while. What's new for XYO World are the geotokens, which are a completely different kind of token – an NFT or ERC-721 token.
NFT stands for non-fungible token. NFTs are collectible. While ERC-20 tokens are always completely alike except for who owns them, ERC-721 tokens are all uniquely identifiable. This means they can be assigned specific properties. In this case, that "property" is almost literal, because they represent real places in the real world.
Each geotoken, which is what we call the type of NFT that is used to assign ownership of quadtiles (digital real estate) in XYO World, is permanently tied to its real place as assigned within the XYO World system. So when you buy the geotoken that encompasses downtown Los Angeles, as far as the XYO World system is concerned, you've claimed downtown Los Angeles. And that piece of land will never change – it will always be associated with the geotoken you've purchased.
So in a nutshell:
XYO = ERC-20 utility token, a type of currency created to facilitate operations
Geotoken = ERC-721 non-fungible token, a type of collectible created to have unique properties
Quadtile = A square on a world map delineating what area has been claimed by the owner of a geotoken
Your geotokens can be traded, sold, and used to help create consensus about where the most location activity should be expected. It's possible to use them for lots of things, in fact, because the data they provide is both unique and useful for development purposes.
Want to know more? Read about ERC-721 from the Ethereum foundation themselves here.