What is IQ.wiki?

One of IQ's products, IQ.wiki is a blockchain-based encyclopedia and decentralized platform that permits anyone to contribute to its knowledge repository. The goal of the protocol is to decentralize information curation and access on the web completely. This article will explore what IQ.wiki is and how it works.

The platform is quite similar in function to Wikipedia, except that it runs on the EOS blockchain. IQ.wiki intends to improve on the Wikipedia model by offering information creators monetary incentives and allowing for a more varied repertoire of content.

Rather than having a centralized body control the flow of information on the internet, individual contributors who own the protocol's native IQ token can create articles about anything as long as they have provided credible sources.

IQ.wiki has created a handful of blockchain-based decentralized applications (DApps) to achieve its goal of neutralizing centralization in the information sector. Some well-known products of the protocol include the IQ.wiki encyclopedia, their blockchain-based encyclopedia; PredIQt, a prediction market and automated market maker (AMM); HiIQ, meant for staking IQ tokens; and IQ.wiki OraQles, a blockchain Oracle.

What is IQ (IQ.wiki)? Quick facts:

• IQ.wiki is a decentralized encyclopedia that began as a fork of Wikipedia and runs on the EOS blockchain.

• IQ.wiki allows users to create and edit informative content and rewards them with its native IQ token.

• The protocol allows users to stake their IQ tokens, granting them the power to vote on matters concerning the platform's future.

• IQ.wiki has several other innovative products in its ecosystem, such as PredIQt, HiIQ, and IQ.wiki Oracles.

How does IQ.wiki work?

IQ.wiki was built on the EOS blockchain and is powered by the IQ token, which is used in its governance and reward system.

IQ.wiki has a three-module system that helps the network eradicate centralization and ensure the immutability of its blockchain. They are the token module, the governance module, and the article submission module. These three modules work hand in hand and are the foundation on which the protocol stands.

Despite its decentralized and open-source nature, IQ.wiki has gone to great lengths to prevent misinformation from its contributors. So, how does IQ.wiki make sure that all content on its platform is unbiased and of decent quality? Editors thoroughly screen every piece of content created on its platform before being accepted.

Furthermore, the protocol has a practical framework to curb the actions of malicious participants. Before submitting write-ups to IQ.wiki, users must stake a fixed amount of the IQ token. If the governing team approves the write-up, the number of tokens staked is refunded to the creator. However, if the content is deemed unacceptable, the creator loses his stake.

Where is IQ.wiki used?

So, what is IQ, and what are its uses? IQ is Everipedia's native token, and it has various services, some of which are listed below:

Rewarding network participants

One notable thing about IQ is how prevalent it is in IQ.wiki's ecosystem. In IQ.wiki’s decentralized platforms, the IQ token is used to incentivize contributors and users. A portion of the platform’s fees is distributed to creators and editors as compensation for their contributions.

Trading

People speculate on the price of IQ tokens in an attempt to make a profit by using exchanges like OKX. OKX offers its users the most cutting-edge trading tools and an excellent overall trading experience.

Governance

The IQ token is also used in the governance system. What is IQ's role in governance? Users can stake their IQ tokens to obtain voting power, granted proportionately to members. The value of tokens held by a user and their holding period determines how much voting power an individual has.

Staking

IQ token holders can stake their tokens in HilQ, IQ.wiki's staking product, to earn staking rewards. What is IQ staking? Well, usually, staking is the process by which holders of a token lock away their tokens on a decentralized platform (in this case, HiIQ) to help validate transactions or for other reasons in return for a reward. The longer a stake is held, the greater the reward.

Collecting non-fungible okens (NFTs)

Every IQ holder who stakes their tokens with HiIQ can win raffle tickets in a contest for digital collectibles. The more HiIQ, a user has, the higher their chances of winning a raffle ticket.

Additionally, Everipedia has been disbursing NFT rewards to token holders. Earlier this year, the protocol collaborated with the NFT project "Supernormal" and distributed non-fungible tokens to IQ stakers, whose cumulative value was $120,000.

History of IQ.wiki

In 2014, software programmers Sam Kazemian and Theodor Forselius founded Everipedia — the platform that would eventually become IQ.wiki. Both were driven by their will to improve the superior internet knowledge and information repository, Wikipedia. Sam, who once tagged Wikipedia a “non-inclusive platform”, and Theodor were inspired by one of the famous writer and entrepreneur Paul Graham’s blog posts published in 2008, which called for more innovative internet knowledge pools besides Wikipedia.

The project kicked off as a fork of Wikipedia, and four years after its founding, the team implemented blockchain technology into its Everipedia platform. From a small project that started in Sam Kazemian’s dormitory, Everipedia has now grown to be used by millions of people all over the globe daily.

In October 2022, Everipedia was archived and made read only, with owners IQ subsequently launching the new iteration, called IQ.wiki.

IQ.wiki’s tokenomics

What are IQ token's tokenomics? How does IQ.wiki work to supply IQ to its users?

IQ.wiki currently has a total supply of about 12 billion and a circulating supply of over 11.1 billion tokens, meaning only 11.1 of the 12 billion tokens in existence are in the hands of the platform's users. The token has a maximum supply of 21 billion—21 billion tokens are all that can exist. New tokens are created to reward creators and editors for their work.

An interesting fact about IQ is that, in the past, the token had a maximum supply of 100 billion. However, in 2021, the IQ.wiki community decided to reduce the token’s maximum supply to 21 billion to pair it with Bitcoin's number.

How Is IQ.wiki created/minted?

One unique thing about IQ is its creation process. IQ tokens are minted to reward editors and curators for their contribution every half-hour. IQ token holders vote on whether or not an editor or curator's contribution is to be rewarded with new IQ tokens. It incentivizes them always to make high-quality contributions. Voters can also vote to partially re-allocate tokens to developer funds, bug bounties, and the like. If no tokens are to be rewarded or re-allocated, no new tokens are created for that half-hour.

IQ.wiki’s competition and how it fares

Perhaps IQ.wiki's greatest competitor is its own ancestor Wikipedia, but while Wikipedia still has a considerably more significant number of users than IQ.wiki, the latter has seen quite remarkable growth over the past few years, having over 3 million monthly active users (MAUs) in 2017.

In addition, while the bulk of the blockchain networks aimed at Web3 content creation is focused on animated media, a few, like the Graph (GRAPH), not built for animated media, have been tipped as potential competitors to IQ. The Graph is an indexing protocol for data and information validation with a vetting framework similar to IQ.wiki's. The Graph, however, plays a slightly different role in the Web3 ecosystem, indexing and validating data from sources.

IQ.wiki’s partnerships and investors

BrainDAO

In December 2021, the protocol launched BrainDAO, dubbed the first Web 3.0 Metaverse Knowledge fund. BrainDAO, known initially as Brainchain and powered by the IQ token, intends to connect blockchains with real-world information and build a decentralized fund dedicated to preserving and funding the creation of such knowledge.

Funding

Everipedia Inc, the company behind the then-called Everipedia protocol, had previously raised funding to support several development stages. The first seed fund was raised in 2015 from Mucker Capital and attracted almost $130,000 on the crowdfunding platform Wefunder. In 2017, the organization raised a further $700,000 from various angel investors, while a further $30 million was raised in 2018 from financial services and investment firm Galaxy Digital's EOS ecosystem fund.

SWOT analysis for IQ.wiki

Strengths

IQ.wiki’s greatest strengths are perhaps its highly decentralized model, highly varied content repertoire, and suitability for the Web3 ecosystem. Also, the platform's incentivization of contribution and curation of its platform and various other offerings, such as NFTs and staking rewards, could give it significant advantages over its competitors.

Weaknesses

The open-source nature of the protocol means that almost anyone can have a say. As a result, content on the platform may sometimes be biased. IQ.wiki has been criticized for promoting content from an unbalanced perspective on several occasions.

Additionally, open-source contributions bear a measure of misinformation risk. In October 2017, an IQ.wiki (then Everipedia) editor misinformed the public about a mass shooting in Las Vegas. The editor misdentified the perpetrator of the shooting as Geary Danley.

Although the error was noticed and corrected 10 minutes after being shared, the damage had already been done. Numerous social media users had spread false information, tarnishing the name of Danley. The protocol has since exercised greater caution before approving content.

Opportunities

As one of the first decentralized protocols focused on informational content creation and with very little competition, IQ.wiki stands to benefit from the growth of its own industry and the broader Web3 economy.

Threats

Competition from more established information repertoires like Wikipedia poses a significant threat to the budding IQ.wiki platform. Furthermore, with the attention span of internet users decreasing each day and people preferring media content over written content, the relevance of an encyclopedia to internet users may be called into question in the future.

IQ.wiki’s Roadmap

PredIQt Earn

PredIQt Earn is a lending market that will function similarly to lending protocols like AAVE. It will enable peer-to-peer lending and borrowing of IQ tokens. It will allow users to take out token loans in return for interest payments to the lenders. The IQ tokens will be borrowed from the funds in the prediction market (PredIQt) contracts.

PredIQt Smart Assets

The PredIQt Smart Assets product will allow users to collateralize their IQ tokens and use them to generate synthetic assets such as iqBTC, iqETh, etc. These synthetic assets can then be traded, lent, borrowed, or just held for exposure to their underlying asset. Something to note about IQ is the IQ.wiki team's commitment to not limit its use in their ecosystem, despite being able to do so.

IQ.wiki’s updates, news, and highlights

1inch listing

On July 21, 2022, IQ was listed on 1inch, a leading DeFi aggregator with over 250 liquidity sources. The listing of IQ on 1inch will give holders the option to provide liquidity and swap their tokens in exchange for all the other tokens listed on 1inch. The platform took to its official X account to make the announcement.

AP Elections

In late 2020, the non-profit news agency Associated Press (AP), recorded its election results on the IQ.wiki database, marking the first time the news agency will record its election data on the blockchain. Blockchain Oracle Chainlink was chosen as the intermediary between AP's data and IQ.wiki.

Wikipedia co-founder’s move to IQ.wiki

In 2017, Dr. Larry Sanger, one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, joined what was then called Everipedia Inc. as its Chief Information Officer. A long-time critic of Wikipedia, he expressed his belief that IQ.wiki could someday disrupt Wikipedia's model.

The IQ.wiki ecosystem

The IQ.wiki ecosystem comprises three significant products, which are PredIQt, a prediction platform; OraQle, a data aggregator; and HiIQ, its staking platform.

PredIQt

PredIQt is a platform that allows users to speculate on any future event and earn rewards based on the outcome of their prediction. It enables users to speculate on issues concerning politics, business, finance, sports, and more.

Users earn IQ tokens when they correctly predict events. The platform applies a share structure. Users can purchase shares for the outcome of future events. The user earns one cryptocurrency unit for each share representing a favorable outcome. Participants are also allowed to sell their shares if they change their minds about the likely outcome of an event.

OraQle

IQ.wiki’s oracle provides smart contracts with information from the outside world and obtains information from only trusted sources.

In November 2020, the IQ.wiki OraQle was used by the Associated Press (AP) to publish the results of the United States Presidential Elections on-chain. That would be the first time any blockchain protocol would be used for publishing political data.

Also, in March 2021, the Associated Press again used IQ.wiki’s OraQle. This time, however, OraQle was used to publish sports data. The AP published the March Madness basketball score on the Ethereum chain. With IQ.wiki’s OraQle software, the Associated Press could publish the schedules and results on the blockchain within minutes.

HiIQ

HiIQ is a decentralized platform for the IQ.wiki community that supports the staking of IQ tokens. With HiIQ, IQ holders can stake their tokens to earn a passive income, the size of which is proportional to the staking period. The platform also rewards users with NFTs.

Where to buy IQ tokens

IQ tokens can be purchased on cryptocurrency exchanges that support it, like OKX. OKX has good support for IQ and lets you buy cryptocurrency with your local currency and a convenient payment method, such as your credit or debit card or a bank transfer. You can purchase cryptocurrency on OKX with other cryptocurrencies as well.

How to store IQ tokens

On an exchange

You can easily store your IQ token on the centralized exchange where you purchased it. Centralized exchanges like OKX offer digital wallets with support for multiple cryptocurrencies that can be more easily recovered than other wallet types in the event of a loss.

In a software wallet

IQ coins can be stored in digital or software wallets. IQ tokens are available on the EOS and Ethereum blockchains, so you can easily store them on any Ethereum-compatible wallet like Metamask or an EOS-compatible wallet like Exodus.

In a hardware wallet

You can also use a hardware wallet compatible with ETH or EOS. Hardware wallets are widely recognized as the safest way to store cryptocurrency, but they can be expensive and technical to use.

How to stake IQ tokens

All IQ token holders can stake their token on HilQ, a DeFi staking platform that rewards IQ token holders with more IQ tokens or NFTs when they stake their IQ tokens in its staking pools.