What Is Foam (FOAM)?
Foam is an open-source protocol inviting individuals, businesses, and organizations to contribute to decentralized geospatial data by joining a company-owned and operated location network. The platform is designed with an aim to build a consensus-driven map of the world and empower the users. The map can be trusted, according to the company, for every application. Geospatial data is information that describes things, events, or other features that have a physical position on or near the earth's surface.
As per the whitepaper, FOAM wants to secure the physical space with the help of blockchain technology. The platform is developed on Ethereum allowing the platform to harness the power of Ethereum blockchain. The platform uses a secure utility token for computational work and verification of the network.
FOAM aims to be transparent and tamper-proof and seeks to provide secure data locations. FOAM Map and FOAM Location can be more resilient alternatives to centralized maps and location services. The idea behind making geospatial data decentralized is that FOAM wants users to own their personal location information. FOAM thinks users should have control to choose when and with whom they wish to share their location.
The company is actively engaged in building tools in the form of spatial protocols, standards, and applications bringing geospatial data to the blockchain and offering a higher level of security. FOAM has three main components:
Crypto Spatial Coordinate standard (CSC) – This is an open-source standard to embed physical location in smart contracts. These smart contracts enable blockchain to act as a registry of spatial contracts. The CSC standard allows spatial contracts to be displayed on the Spatial Index Visualizer.
Spatial Index and Visualizer Webapp – A visual blockchain explorer enables users to understand and engage with the spatial data.
Proof of location – This is a protocol that provides the framework and infrastructure to support a decentralized and safe alternative to GPS. GPS stands for Global Positioning System. It is a system that uses satellites that synchronize location, velocity, and time data. The proof of location utility is achieved through a Token Curated Registry (TCR) process. TCR is a crypto model for curating human-readable lists with economic incentives for token holders to curate the listed content. CSC and TCR are important factors for a new form of mapping and maintaining the points of interest. Proof of location also helps to overcome the vulnerabilities of GPS, the current location verification alternative.
FOAM is the native token that empowers different elements of the Foam platform.
History of Foam (FOAM)
Ryan John King, Kristoffer Joseffson, and Katya Zavyalova are the founders of FOAM. The whitepaper was released on January 05, 2018.
