Alexandria: Redefining Content with ICP and Tokenised Libraries for Web3

Alexandria is a platform that aims to reshape how we interact with digital content in the Web3 era. Built on the foundations of the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) and Arweave, Alexandria is a tokenised ecosystem designed to ensure permanent, user-owned content. The platform’s goal is to provide a space where creators have full control over their work, free from algorithmic control and opaque monetisation policies. Alexandria is focused on creating an environment where every interaction is driven by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), fostering a new economy for content creators and users alike.

The backbone of Alexandria’s operations lies in leveraging the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) and Arweave. This combination allows for the creation of what the team calls the “user-owned content stack,” underpinned by secure tokenomics and decentralised infrastructure. Alexandria introduces its dual-token economy through LBRY and ALEX, fostering a sustainable framework for content storage, access, and governance.

Navigating Alexandria begins with acquiring an Internet Identity, a process that opens the doors for users to become “Librarians.” These Librarians gain the ability to store, share, and monetise content, all of which are tokenised as NFTs. Unlike traditional platforms, where creators are often subject to opaque algorithms and monetisation policies, Alexandria guarantees a transparent, token-based system. Users pay a small fee in LBRY to mint content, creating predictable costs. More interestingly, those who interact with these NFTs generate revenues for their creators, forming a decentralised economy of content use and appreciation.

The protocol offers a unique perspective on digital permanence, with all assets stored on Arweave for lasting accessibility. However, safety is a key concern for participants. ICP holdings and NFTs are deemed secure, but certain features, like staking ALEX or maintaining balances within the app, carry moderate risks. Providing liquidity outside the platform or holding large amounts of LBRY is deemed particularly unsafe, a reminder of the platform’s experimental nature.

Recent updates to Alexandria’s tokenomics bring a focus on fairness and engagement. The pool for random NFT selection during reward distribution has been expanded from 1,000 to 10,000 SBTs (Soul-Bound Tokens). This adjustment not only discourages gaming the system but also ensures broader participation. The changes come after early adopters witnessed impressive returns on their contributions, with an average reward multiplier of 150 times during the initial stages of the platform.

The intricacy of Alexandria’s reward mechanisms reflects its focus on rewarding genuine interactions. Each time LBRY is burned, three new ALEX tokens are minted, with the rewards split between the burner, a random Scion NFT from the last 10,000 minted, and the parent NFT of that Scion. This ensures that contributors across the network benefit from every action, reinforcing a balance that incentivises both creation and engagement.

Beyond the tokenomics, Alexandria’s ecosystem is expanding to include a decentralised social network, search engine, ereader, and video streaming service. These apps aim to provide users with tools that integrate seamlessly into the NFT-driven economy. Developers are encouraged to build on Alexandria using its LibModules and AppModules, which offer flexible APIs and UI components for decentralised applications. This openness ensures that Alexandria’s vision can evolve with contributions from a broader community, solidifying its role as a foundation rather than a standalone product.

One of the standout innovations within Alexandria is VetKey sharing, a feature that allows users to lend private or API keys without exposing them. This functionality bridges Web2 services with decentralised applications, further blurring the lines between traditional and blockchain-based systems. Alexandria’s ability to interface with existing infrastructures while providing tools for new ones exemplifies its hybrid approach to modernising the web.

Architecture & Governance

Alexandria will remain centrally managed during the testnet phase. All code is unaudited and impractical to manage through the SNS at this stage. The current strategy involves gradually delegating tasks to DAO canisters and preparing others to be blackholed, but this will occur mainly after the testing phase.

Governance

UncensoredGreats is currently a centrally developed and deployed project. It depends on an architecture of tentatively ‘blackholed’ canisters, renouncing storage and token-related smart contracts over time. It is fully open-source, so the current state of decentralisation can be tracked on GitHub.

The frontend will be continuously developed, and so use of backend functions from blackholed canisters will remain mutable indefinitely. Nonetheless, anyone can fork the project with an alternative frontend that’s bound by the same code and data of Alexandria’s universal backend canisters.

Since this model prioritises immutability for the sake of permanence, governance is initially limited to matters involving NFT ownership. The governance mechanism allows proposals that can delete NFTs (if corrupted/inaccurate) or transfer ownership (to any true author that claims it) with a simple majority and quorum of staked ALEX holders.

Inspiration

‘AI’ was kept out of this whitepaper entirely, despite it being at the core of Alexandria’s founding vision.

This project was born out of a pilot project called UncensoredGreats, where you’d chat with great authors in an uncensored way. There was one finding of this experiment that shaped Alexandria: When an AI is fed author words directly, and forced to answer without knowledge of the user’s question, responses became far more interesting and honest. In other words, a technique to output particular human thoughts from training data rather than aggregate ones is far more conducive to discovery.

As AI models grow in size and complexity, the outputs will grow more generic, and our people-first methodology more fruitful. This direction goes against the grain of the entire AI space but remains steadfast in what we see as a longstanding principle of computer science, exemplified by the story of one early internet legend.

The Hyperlink Paradigm

In 1968, Doug Engelbart and his team presented “A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect” in San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium. It introduced:

(1) A responsive human-machine interface. (2) The computer mouse. (3) Copy/paste and text reorganisation. (4) Hyperlinks. (5) Real-time screen-sharing collaboration.

Most remember this as the “Mother of all Demos” for obvious reasons. What most forget about Engelbart’s experience though is in the two decades preceding this demo, where he was at best refused help, and at worst outright ridiculed for holding that computers would be “tools for collaboration and augmentation” instead of Artificial Intelligence (a story best told in What the Dormouse Said).

During the 1950s and 60s, the entire CS field was convinced that the primary use case of computation was autonomous machines and AI, while Doug held that computers would be tools for humans to interface with. Despite 70 years of evidence of that same trajectory, popular opinion has not budged an inch. As this decade of tech becomes the gold rush for blowing smoke with AI buzzwords, we see recent breakthroughs in AI through Engelbart’s eyes, as history’s next big tool that we need a human-centric interface for.

Engelbart’s design was one webpage and a hyperlink for two. It’s now for 200 million sites and 3.5 billion people. The design isn’t perfect: Webpages change, hyperlinks disappear, both can be lost, stolen, or hacked, and neither can be truly owned or trusted.

Alexandria is a universal content bed for the internet. While the world works to make AI the perfect tool, like Doug’s peers did with compute machines; we’re building a control room that puts humans at their helm, just like Doug’s “tools for collaboration and augmentation.” Really, we’re just migrating Doug’s stack to Web3.

Alexandria is a social graph of NFTs. Instead of navigating hyperlinks through algorithms, you’ll navigate permalinks through favourite stuff of the people you know. It’s a simpler, humbler approach to the online experience, but where everything is uniquely yours, which might be just what the internet needs right now.

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Maria Irene
Maria Irenehttp://ledgerlife.io/
Maria Irene is a multi-faceted journalist with a focus on various domains including Cryptocurrency, NFTs, Real Estate, Energy, and Macroeconomics. With over a year of experience, she has produced an array of video content, news stories, and in-depth analyses. Her journalistic endeavours also involve a detailed exploration of the Australia-India partnership, pinpointing avenues for mutual collaboration. In addition to her work in journalism, Maria crafts easily digestible financial content for a specialised platform, demystifying complex economic theories for the layperson. She holds a strong belief that journalism should go beyond mere reporting; it should instigate meaningful discussions and effect change by spotlighting vital global issues. Committed to enriching public discourse, Maria aims to keep her audience not just well-informed, but also actively engaged across various platforms, encouraging them to partake in crucial global conversations.

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