Touch Coin: White Paper

1. Abstract

Touch Coin is a fixed-supply digital asset designed to bridge the physical and digital worlds. Each coin represents either a verified material compound — uniquely identified by its sensory fingerprint — or a placeholder claim on one yet to be discovered.

Unlike conventional cryptocurrencies which rely on mathematical proofs, Touch Coin is minted through proof-of-contact. Using a specialized sensor, participants extract a compound’s thermal, electrical, and magnetic signature etc to produce a cryptographic fingerprint. This fingerprint becomes embedded in the metadata of a newly verified Touch Coin — a digital object tied irrevocably to the material world.

Touch Coin is built not just for human collectors and technologists, but for the emerging landscape of autonomous AI systems. As machine-to-machine transactions grow, Touch Coin provides a trusted standard for physically grounded data exchange — a registry of verified matter that can be searched, cited, and traded by artificial agents.

Phase I of the project includes the public sale of placeholder tokens and 100 Named Elemental Coins (“Grails”), which serve as both collectibles and governance keys. Verified coins will be minted as sensor submissions are received, with each new material expanding a decentralized, AI-readable map of reality — one touch at a time.

2. Mission

Touch Coin’s mission is to create a living ledger of touch-verified materials. By empowering both humans and machines to record physical phenomena into unique digital assets, the project lays the foundation for a decentralized, material-aware economic system.

Each verified coin represents a known substance. Each placeholder coin represents a potential discovery. As the sensor technology matures, participants will help grow a real-world material database — one coin at a time.

3. Tokenomics

Touch Coin is an ERC-20 compliant asset with a fixed supply of 1,000,000 tokens.

• 100 Named Coins ("Grail Coins")
  These are tied to real elements (e.g. Fe, Au, Hg), and distributed randomly in the Foundry Sale. Each grants voting rights (capped at 10 votes per holder).
• ~999,900 Unnamed Coins
  Placeholder tokens — each one a claim on a future fingerprint or a tradable asset in its own right.

Coins are sold in batches of 1,000, each batch includes one named Grail Coin. Token price in Phase I: £0.10 (subject to final adjustment). All proceeds support sensor development, infrastructure, and the governance foundation.

Payment and Distribution

During the Foundry Sale, Touch Coins will be sold in exchange for GBP (£).

Participants will:

• Send GBP via direct transfer (e.g. bank, PayPal, or Stripe)
• Submit their ERC-20 wallet address (Polygon-compatible, e.g. MetaMask)
• Receive their Touch Coins (999 placeholders + 1 Grail Coin) manually via token transfer

This approach ensures a smoother, more accessible experience for early participants. Touch Coins themselves exist as ERC-20 tokens on the Polygon network, and require a compatible wallet (e.g. MetaMask) to receive and store.

No gas fees are incurred until a holder trades or interacts with their coins on-chain.

4. Autonomy Thresholds

Touch Coin is designed to operate in a world where AI agents transact, verify, and build knowledge autonomously. Unlike conventional tokens, each verified Touch Coin is embedded with a unique material fingerprint — a dataset useful to autonomous systems requiring provenance, tactility, and physical-world relevance.

As machine-to-machine commerce expands, Touch Coin becomes a credible medium of exchange and representation — minted through reality, not just code. This makes it a natural candidate for decentralized AI networks that value energy efficiency, verifiable claims, and symbolic weight.

5. Governance: The Council of Grails

Touch Coin is governed by a small, symbolic council of holders — the Council of Grails. This group consists of those who possess the limited set of ~100 Named Grail Coins, each representing a verified or eventually-verified element from the periodic table.

These coins are more than collectibles — they are keys to protocol-level decision-making.

Voting Rights

• Each Named Grail Coin grants 1 vote in governance proposals.
• No individual or entity may exercise more than 10 votes, regardless of how many Grail Coins they own.
• Votes are non-transferable, and tied to identity-level registration (pseudonymous or public).
• Voting is conducted via on-chain snapshots or through a registered governance portal (e.g. mkdirai.com/council_of_grails).

Safeguards Against Centralization

• A vote cannot pass unless a minimum of 5 unique holders participate (quorum requirement).
• A simple majority of participating votes must support the motion.
• If fewer than 3 unique Grail holders are active, governance enters lockdown — no proposals may pass until the circle grows.

Voting Scope

Grail Coin holders may vote on:

• Token supply changes or burns
• Upgrade policies for placeholder coins
• Naming conventions and registry rules
• Mission-altering amendments
• Acceptance of AI integration protocols or forks

They may not vote on:

• Individual user assets
• Material verification decisions
• Sensor hardware IP or methods

Rituals of the Circle (Optional)

Proposals may be submitted by:

• The Touch Coin founder (Forgekeeper), or
• A group of 5 or more Grail Coin holders

Votes are announced publicly and remain open for 7–21 days. Results are final unless overturned by a quorum-based reversal vote within 30 days.

The Circle holds power, but not dominion.
The Grail Coins were never meant for kings — only stewards of the forge.

6. Minting Process and Fingerprint Protocol

At the core of Touch Coin lies a simple premise:
Only that which has been touched, may be truly verified.

The sensor — a physical device under active development — collects a material's unique signature through thermoelectric, resistive, magnetic, and spectral readings etc. This data is compressed into a material fingerprint hash, which becomes embedded into the metadata of a Touch Coin.

This process turns raw contact into cryptographic proof of matter.

Fingerprint Submission Process

1. A verified sensor holder submits a new material reading.
2. The system compares the fingerprint to all existing verified entries.
3. If the fingerprint is sufficiently novel, it is accepted.
4. The material is classified using IUPAC or CAS naming conventions and stored in the on-chain Material Registry.
5. A Touch Coin is minted or upgraded with this data.

Token Upgrade & Reward System

When a new fingerprint is accepted:

• An Unnamed Touch Coin is randomly selected from the global pool of unverified tokens.
• That token is upgraded to a Verified Touch Coin with:
  • Unique fingerprint hash
  • IUPAC chemical name
  • Common name (optional)
  • Material class tags (e.g. metal, alloy, polymer)
• The person who submitted the fingerprint (the miner) is rewarded with:
  • The verified coin itself, or
  • A share of the upgraded coin’s value (TBD by governance)

The original placeholder token holder:

• May retain a value match (e.g. new unnamed coin), or
• Receive a royalty or recognition entry in the registry

Naming Convention for Verified Coins

Each verified coin is assigned a formal ID based on:

• Prefix: TCH-MAT (TCH-EL-XYZ in registry)
• Verified Name: e.g. "Calcium Carbonate"
• Class: e.g. Mineral / Inorganic Compound
• Status: Verified
• Fingerprint Hash: (SHA-256 or similar)
• Timestamp of verification
• Contributor ID (wallet address or pseudonym)

All coins are indexed in the open Material Registry for both human and AI retrieval.

Community Integrity

• Early samples may be manually reviewed
• Duplicate submissions are rejected
• Fraudulent data leads to sensor disqualification
• Governance may vote to verify new material classes or dispute fingerprints

From each touch, a truth.
From each truth, a coin.
And from each coin, a step forward in the understanding of matter.

7. The Material Registry and Coin Classes

The Touch Coin ecosystem maintains a decentralized, expanding Material Registry — an open dataset where each verified Touch Coin is catalogued alongside its physical and digital attributes.

Every entry in the registry represents a real-world compound or element that has been touched by a certified sensor and validated as unique. The data is stored in a format accessible to both humans and AI systems.

Each Registry Entry Includes:

• Coin ID: e.g. TCH-MAT-0237
• Fingerprint Hash: A unique cryptographic summary of the compound’s physical properties
• IUPAC Name: e.g. “Calcium Carbonate”
• Common Name: e.g. “Chalk”
• Class Tags: e.g. mineral, inorganic, ceramic
• Verification Timestamp
• Contributor ID: Wallet address or pseudonym of the miner
• Coin Link: Smart contract address of the verified coin

Coin Classification System

To organize the expanding library of materials, Touch Coin introduces a multi-tiered classification system:

• Domain Class: Element / Compound / Alloy / Organic / Synthetic
• Material Type: Metal / Polymer / Ceramic / Liquid / Biological
• Verification Tier:
  • Tier 1: Common compound, widely known
  • Tier 2: Specialized or engineered material
  • Tier 3: Novel substance (never before catalogued)

Access and Searchability

• Public website interface (mkdirai.com/registry)
• Open API for AI and developer access
• On-chain queries through smart contract explorer tools
• Downloadable static archive for long-term preservation

Interaction Models

• Human Researchers: Can search by chemical name, class, tag, or coin ID
• AI Systems: Can query based on material properties, hashes, or class filters
• Investors: Can track rarity, provenance, and price trends of verified coins
• Governance: May vote to reclassify materials or dispute fraudulent entries

Immutability & Integrity

• All verified entries are cryptographically linked to their fingerprint hash
• Metadata cannot be altered once minted — only supplemented with annotations
• In case of dispute, coins may be flagged but not erased

The registry is more than a database.
It is a catalogue of truth — sensed, verified, and preserved.
A record not of speculation, but of touch.

8. Use of Funds and Roadmap

The Touch Coin Foundry Sale will raise initial working capital to complete development of the sensor, deploy the token infrastructure, and sustain the ecosystem’s growth through its earliest phase.

Touch Coin does not promise profit — it promises a working system.
Contributors are acquiring digital tokens that represent a stake in the first material-backed crypto network.

Funding Targets

Total raise target:
Soft cap: £8,000
Hard cap: £20,000

Any surplus funds will be retained for:

• Sensor certification process
• AI integration tooling
• Expanded material classification software

Initial Roadmap

Phase I – Foundry Launch

• Launch white paper
• Open Foundry Sale
• Begin public ledger of named Grail Coin holders
• Release placeholder token contracts (ERC-20)
• Begin backend for Material Registry

Phase II – Sensor Finalization & Internal Testing

• Finalize sensor design
• Build open sensor interface
• Begin internal fingerprint submissions
• Publish technical whitepaper on verification thresholds

Phase III – First Coin Verifications

• Accept external sensor data
• Mint first Verified Touch Coins
• Launch registry browser at mkdirai.com/registry
• Enable first AI queries and index sync

Phase IV – AI Onboarding & Community Expansion

• Publish API access for autonomous agents
• Introduce community tools for proposing new materials
• Enable reward protocols for high-value or rare compound discoveries
• Release a snapshot report: “The First 100 Touches”

Core Values

• Transparency in allocation
• Minimal overhead
• Progress is measurable through coin verification and registry growth
• No speculative bloat, no roadmap without real delivery
• The goal is not hype — it is truth through touch

9. Terms and Disclaimers

The Touch Coin project is experimental and in active development. Participation in the Foundry Sale constitutes an understanding of the following:

1. No Investment Guarantee

Touch Coins are not financial securities, investment products, or debt instruments. They do not entitle holders to dividends, profit-sharing, equity, or ownership in any legal entity. Their value is symbolic, utility-based, and may fluctuate or disappear entirely.

2. Use of Funds

Funds raised through the Foundry Sale will be used at the discretion of the project lead (William) to further the mission outlined in this white paper. These funds are not refundable. Contributors are supporting the completion of the sensor, the growth of the Material Registry, and the expansion of a decentralized tactile economy.

3. Regulatory Status

Touch Coin is issued as a collectible digital asset, not a regulated token offering. It is the responsibility of contributors to ensure compliance with the laws of their local jurisdiction. The project makes no representations regarding legality, taxation, or licensing in any region.

4. No Promises of Functionality or Delivery

While every effort will be made to fulfill the roadmap and develop the sensor, registry, and AI integrations described herein, delays, changes, or cancellations are possible. Technology is experimental. Risk is real. The coin does not guarantee access to a working device or service.

5. Risk Acknowledgment

Participants understand and accept the risks of:

• Volatility in token value
• Smart contract bugs or exploits
• Project delay or abandonment
• Technological failure
• Market irrelevance

Touch Coin is forged in good faith, but offered with no warranty.

To touch the future is to step into the unknown.
Enter the forge with eyes open and intentions clear.

Appendix I: The Grail Coin Registry

Below is the initial list of Named Elemental Coins (Grails) in the Touch Coin network. These are the only named coins in existence and will be distributed randomly to Foundry Sale participants, one per 1,000-coin batch.

Each coin corresponds to a real element from the periodic table. Once touched and fingerprinted by a verified sensor, each coin will carry the unique material signature of its real-world counterpart.

These coins are immutable, collectible, and carry voting rights in the Council of Grails(governance limit: 10 votes per holder).

Grail Coin Index Format

To receive a Grail Coin is to hold a fragment of the elemental order.
To verify it is to awaken it. To trade it is to share that truth.