Eternal Physical Crypto

Introducing HaLo Chips by Kong Land

One of the most fundamental characteristics that distinguishes cryptocurrencies from any other asset class is self custody. Unlike fiat currencies held by banks or game content mediated by corporations, crypto assets can be fundamentally owned by someone into perpetuity — effectively eternal with respect to the protocols they are created on.

Kong Cash is the first physical crypto entity with similar properties to cryptocurrency — a bearer instrument with its own cryptographic identity that is owned by whomever holds it. Since the release of Kong Cash in late 2019 we’ve shared in the building excitement for the potential of physical crypto assets.

Creators have started to experiment with QR codes and off-the-shelf NFC tags as a means of linking their physical creations to digital assets. For one-time claims and airdrops, QR codes and NFC URLs are an ideal solution for temporary crypto assets — they’re low cost and easy to deploy. However, in most cases these solutions are incapable of creating a long-lived identity for the object through cryptographic attestations.

With Kong Land and SiLo (“Silicon Locked Contract”) tags, we expanded from crypto cash to the ability to create any kind of physical crypto asset which doesn’t require an intermediary for authentication or ownership. SiLo tags are the first product dedicated to creating eternal physical crypto.

At EthDenver we unveiled this latest generation of Kong tags, HaLos. HaLos — Hardware Locked Contracts — share a number of similarities with SiLos with some important distinctions.

Unlike SiLos which require a dedicated app, users can interact with HaLos entirely via a mobile browser. And, instead of using the P256 elliptic curve like Kong Cash, they use Ethereum’s native secp256k1 which means they can directly sign transactions and messages, massively reducing the cost of verification on chain. Most importantly we believe that we can consistently source reasonable volumes of HaLos for projects and creators making novel crypto experiences in the real world.

HaLos have distinct security guarantees from SiLos in that their cryptographic logic is reliant on some firmware level guarantees. This means that while HaLo’s could be used in any application, we believe they are best targets at physical assets with values of $100–10,000 rather than ultra high-end applications where SiLos are better suited. As compared to easily copied QR codes and URLs on NFC tags, HaLo’s can attest to their own identity through the generation of signatures.

We believe that the potential for physical crypto assets is only limited by the imagination of the creator. HaLo chips offer strong guarantees about the authenticity of an item, but the possibilities for linking on-chain assets are much greater.

Kong Land is on a mission to improve the state of the art of cryptographic chips for the self-custody and creation of physical crypto assets. We look forward to working not only with creators, but also manufacturers, platforms and projects that make it easy for anyone to mint physical crypto assets and experiences.

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