TOKEN COMICS BEGINS … Comic Books on the Blockchain!
There are a few big moments in comic book history … Action Comics #1 (the first appearance and origin of Superman) … Detective Comics #27 (the first appearance of the Batman) … Amazing Fantasy #15 (the first appearance of Spider-Man) … but that’s nothing compared to what has quietly launched during the sunset of 2020!
OK, so what IS Token Comics? The short version is, it’s a dApp on the TRON blockchain that allows you to buy, sell, read and collect digital comic books just like you could physical comics. So what’s the big deal? It allows you to OWN digital comic books, not just read them … and that’s just for starters (kindly remember who shared this info with you first, when I ask you for a favor at the end of this article).
Up until now, you could buy a subscription for $10 from MarvelComics.com and read digital comic books online ... but you wouldn’t actually own them. When your subscription expires, so would your access to their content. And even if you could download and access this content again, so what? There would be no collector value to it. It would simply take up memory on your computer.
Now imagine that you could go to a website, select a comic book to purchase, purchase it using a cryptocurrency (TRON, TRX) and have it instantly delivered right into your crypto wallet (TronLink.org). With the comic book token in your wallet, you could then read the comic book content online. And when you’re done with it, you could either keep it in your collection … or sell it, and transfer it, to someone else! Is the lightbulb going on, yet? Good. Now, hold onto your hat!
Most people have heard of bitcoin, which was the very first “crypto currency” to make use of “blockchain technology,” invented in 2009. The idea behind bitcoin was to create a form of digital money that could be stored on an electronic wallet and transferred, peer to peer. Because there will never be more than 21,000,000 bitcoins ever created, there is a finite amount of supply, which makes it a “deflationary asset,”( which simply means that, as the demand increases, the value of bitcoin is designed to go up). Bitcoin is counterfeit proof. It can be sent anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes, and it’s theft resistant because it exists as a record on thousands of computers throughout the world. Since 2009, there have been many improvements and many different blockchains have launched.
TRON is the #16 blockchain according to coinmarketcap.com and started off as an Ethereum clone, but unlike Ethereum (which is still Proof of Work), TRON is already Proof of Stake (something Ethereum hopes to accomplish in 2 more years)! The differences between the two is that ETH is slow, at about 15 transactions per second (TPS) and TRON is much faster, at around 2,000 TPS! Ethereum is also much more expensive, at around $3 — $16 per transaction, compared to TRON which is around $0.21 per transaction!
OK, so enough about blockchain … let’s get back to the cool stuff that Token Comics has built into their comic book platform that makes this such an exciting and unique project!
First, most coins and tokens are either mined into existence as a reward for miners verifying transactions, or they are pre-mined into existence, meaning all the tokens are produced up front and then sold. Neither is the case with Token Comics’ comic book tokens!
Every issue has a defined, “minting period” that is usually about 30 days and modeled after the one month newsstand period for print comics. You can buy a comic book token during it’s minting period, but once the minting period expires, the token is no longer available for purchase!
There is also a “Maximum Potential Supply,” meaning the maximum number of tokens that could ever exist of that issue. This guarantees the collectible nature of each token as the number of tokens minted is transparent and verifiable on the TRON blockchain.
Just because an issue has a maximum limit that could be minted doesn’t mean that many tokens WILL be minted … because tokens are minted to order and purchased into existence! When someone buys a token from the Token Comics smart contract, a unique token is then minted and delivered into the TronLink wallet of the purchaser! So if there are only 1,000 tokens actually purchased, that’s all that will ever exist! But that’s not all … when a token is minted, its also assigned a random collectible grade!
Grades assigned by the Token Comics smart contract resemble the grading scale used by CGC (the Comics Guarantee Corporation), a company that professionally grades and “slabs” collectible comic books. Token Comics grades range from 6.0 to 10.0. But they are more than just a pretty, random number … they are related to that token’s functionality and rarity … and they are consumable!
The basic functionality of every Token Comics token is that you can buy, sell, and read with them, but you can also “print.” And the random grades assigned to each comic book token are related to the number of times you can use the print function!
10.0 = Can print 5 times (occurs about 1% of the time)
9.0 = Can print 4 times (occurs about 4% of the time)
8.0 = can print 3 times (occurs about 15% of the time)
7.0 = can print 2 times (occurs about 40% of the time)
6.0 = can print 1 time (occurs about 40% of the time)
OK, so why print? Well … because you can. It’s actually kinda’ cool.
You see, the comic books, themselves, cannot be printed. They are Token Comics’ protected IP. But when you click the “Print” button, you’re able to access special images that you’re allowed to print or download to your computer and you can use them for any non-commercial purpose you want. For example, you can use the images to create mugs, a mouse pad, a tee-shirt, or as a background on your computer or phone (you can use them for virtually anything you want, as long as it’s not for profit). But wait … there’s more!
Hidden somewhere on every print image is a seed phrase clue! Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a hacker to figure this out … it’s non-hacker friendly … you just have to have an eye for detail. All seed phrase clues are VISIBLE, so after you look at the image long enough you’ll find it.
Seed phrase clues consist of a letter and a number. The letter is part of the seed phrase. The number tells you it’s position within the seed phrase! For example, if the first word in the seed phrase were ACTION, the seed phrase clues for these letters would be A1, C2, T3, I4, O5 and N6.
The more times you print, the more clues you can collect, until eventually you’ll have enough letters to guess the complete seed phrase. You can then use the seed phrase to restore a TronLink wallet, and if you’re the first to succeed, you’ll win up to 250,000 TRX! Cool, right?
Now for the bad news (which is also pretty cool, actually) … every time you print with your token, its grade is reduced by one, until it becomes a grade 5.0 and can no longer be used for printing. That means, there could eventually be a lot of 5.0s out there, but not as many of the other grades. And since a 10.0 is so rare to begin with, if you get one, you might not want to print with it!
So what about the comic book content, itself? Well, the creator of Token Comics is “Joe Z” (Joseph Zyskowski) and back in the 1990’s he started a comic book publishing company called Lightning Comics that lasted about 6 years. Joe Z still owns the IP to the comics he published, so Token Comics is starting off by using them for their comic book content. The art and stories are actually very cool. But Zyskowski’s vision is bigger than just publishing his own content.
Joe Z would like to see Token Comics become a “blockchain distributor” of other publisher’s comic book content, too. This means Token has the long term potential to become the blockchain equivalent of Diamond Comic Distributors, who supplies all the independently owned and operated comic shops throughout the United States! Diamond distributes for Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Zenoscope, and many more … and one day, Token might do the same, but on the blockchain!
Excited? Good. You should be. Comic books have evolved through the years in what has been called the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Copper Age, Modern Age, and is right now entering … “the digital age!” And you’ve found out about it at the very beginning!
Token Comics offers a built in referral program that allows you to earn commissions by referring others to their website, too. You must purchase ANY token from their Token Comics Smart Contract to activate your referral link, but once you do, you can share it with others and you’ll receive 20% referral fees from every new customer you refer, over and over again, every time they make a purchase from the TC Smart Contract, forever! But it gets even better, because if you refer someone who also refers someone, they will get a 20% commission and you will get a 5% commission, too!
Before you visit Token Comics, you must have the TronLink extension added to your Chrome or Firefox browser (Brave is not recommended because cookies are required for the TC site to work properly). You can add the TronLink extension to your browser for free by visiting https://tronscan.org. To make any purchases, you’ll need to have some TRON (TRX) in your TronLink wallet, too, which you can buy from Kraken.com, Binance, and any number of other, reputable crypto exchanges.
So … remember that favor I told you I was going to ask you for?
If you found this article to be informative and to have value, please up vote it on Medium, and please use my referral link, below, when you visit Token Comics so I can receive a referral fee at no additional expense to you. :)
Please use this link when visiting Token Comics, AFTER you have added the TronLink extension to your browser:
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