Billionaire tech investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is backing a company developing an Ethereum blockchain-based platform that claims to be the future of online communications.

Called the “Mercury Protocol,” the blockchain platform uses distributed record-keeping and a token system that supposedly protects privacy while also encouraging positive contributions in place of trolling.

On the privacy side, the platform is claimed to protect user privacy and security thanks to Ethereum blockchain’s ability to anonymize a user’s identity. Behavioral data on the platform won’t be linked to individuals, meaning that it has less value to advertisers. “While all transactions on the blockchain are public, users are protected through pseudonymity because nothing on the blockchain associates their real identity with their Ethereum account,” the company said Thursday in a post on Medium.

Where things get interesting, or cancerous depending on your views about tokens and initial coin offerings, the platform issues Ethereum ERC20 tokens for interactions. For example, at a base level, users will be awarded tokens for reading content on the platform, but in addition, they also will be awarded tokens, or what the company refers to as “reputation points,” for “positive interactions.”

“This reputation score can be leveraged to encourage positive activity and discourage negative activity by increasing or decreasing GMT cost of services based on a user’s reputation,” the company explained. “Similar to a credit score or insurance claim history, users with weaker reputation score may be charged higher premiums while users with a stronger reputation will be charged a lower premium.”

According to Fortune, the team behind the platform is hoping that it could eventually be adopted by existing messaging services such as WhatsApp, Signal and Facebook Messenger. For now, though, the platform will be used by two Cuban-backed apps – a little-used messaging app initially called Cyber Dust but now called Dust that was launched in 2014, and a forthcoming messaging app called Broadcast that apparently has something to do with people paying to talk to celebrities.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons