Viskous Breakthrough
TL;DR
We are postponing coffee token fulfillment until our new redemption app is in production, sometime in early 2024. We will buy back all outstanding tokens at 125% of the market price on Dec. 6. Go to the appropriate Uniswap pool below and sell your token at the new price.
Please note that once tokens have expired (past the redemption period indicated on the token description), we will withdraw all of our liquidity from the Uniswap pool for that token.
Be sure to check out our updated viskous.com site!
Existing tokens with holders
Breakthrough
Since our soft launch three weeks ago and our initial coffee token launch two weeks ago, we've been working hard to build our redemption engine that allows tokenholders to redeem tokens for real world goods.
Our initial launch and development plan was to focus exclusively on coffee for the foreseeable future, taking an "Amazon strategy" to scaling by focusing on a single market (Amazon famously focused on books initially) until the brand and technology is mature enough to expand into other markets. However, during development we had a technology implementation breakthrough that greatly simplifies how token redemption and fulfillment works.
The original strategy
Tying crypto to real world assets is challenging because handling physical items requires extra capital, time, personnel, and is therefore difficult to scale. For Viskous, our plan has never been to produce our own physical products, but to tokenize the products of other businesses. However, without customers other businesses are reluctant to engage in a partnership, and without a partnership, how can we tokenize the products of other businesses?
Our original plan was to copy the "Amazon strategy" and focus on a single market (roasted coffee) and physically fulfill the orders ourselves. In Austin, we are fortunate to have access to many high quality coffee roasters in the area, and we personally reviewed coffees from 15 local roasters, classifying roaster and coffee bean quality to help create the most consistent categorization of roasted coffee that will allow us to create fungible roasted coffee tokens across many roasters and coffee of similar quality, taste, and roast level. The outcome of this roasted coffee classification system is what defined our initial coffee token launch.
Our design for the initial Viskous App would allow you to browse available freshly roasted coffee and select which to redeem with your qualifying tokens. Our team would then manage pickup of freshly roasted coffee bags from the local roasters, and we would package and ship them to you ourselves. This "Amazon strategy" bridges the gap between you and the roasters until we are able to partner with roasters and have freshly roasted coffee shipped directly from them.
However, while this strategy can obviously be a successful initial strategy, it still puts an extra burden on our team, adds more steps where product quality can decrease, and does not allow us to scale at an ideal rate.
The breakthrough
During development, while working on the redemption engine architecture (specifically how onchain token redemption can be simplified for our roaster partners) we discovered a redemption setup that not only makes coffee token redemption more compatible with existing roaster e-commerce systems, but is also immediately functional with any online product or service.
Because this new architecture allows us to enable token redemption with roasters much more quickly than originally planned, we have decided to postpone token redemption until this system is in production. This will allow the team to focus on software development exclusively without the need for a temporary period where our team physically fulfills orders. Once this system is in place, roasters will fulfill your order themselves according to their own fulfillment method.
Although this new system will be compatible with any online product or service, we still plan to take a partial "Amazon strategy" and focus on coffee exclusively for the immediate future. This focus will allow us to ensure our tokenization service is consistent and of high quality, and give us time to better understand the economics of tokenizing real world assets. But, we will take the opportunity to expand our target market when the appropriate time comes.
You can see a preview of what a cross-market Viskous app might look like at our updated viskous.com site.
What happens now
We are postponing coffee token fulfillment until our new redemption app is in production, likely sometime in January 2024. We will buy back all outstanding tokens at 125% of the market price before this announcement. Go to the appropriate Uniswap pool below and swap your token before expiration. We're sorry that you won't be able to fulfill your coffee tokens just yet, but this new system will provide a much better experience! Thanks for your patience!
Please note that once tokens have expired (past the redemption period indicated on the token description), we will withdraw all of our liquidity from the Uniswap pool for that token.
Existing tokens with holders
Thanks for being a Viskous follower! We will continue to keep you updated on our progress, and be on the lookout for more posts with details on our thoughts and strategies regarding tokenization of real world assets and how this technology can enable a new form of money.
For the latest info, go to viskous.com