Such centralized solutions work at the expense of operability with other systems, transparency and standardization. This makes the whole value chain susceptible to fraudulent activities mediated by bots, content farms and the like resulting in breakdown of trust.
Cros is being built on the premise that a decentralized advertising infrastructure can be built on blockchain primitives unlocking value for content **creators**, **developers**, **publishers , advertisers** and **consumers** thereby pushing the boundaries of brand engagement and advertising in games and virtual worlds.
# Publishing
These are still early days for the current advertising ecosystem for gaming platforms and there is much work to be done.
## Publisher
The game publishers are people and entities that control the games available from different gaming platforms. The definition extends to owners of virtual world assets, such digital spaces can be land parcels with built environment such as art galleries, cafes, stadiums or these could be games, contest and events. Based on the specific aspects of these platforms, each game or space can have a virtual ad-slot where content (a form of media) can be played or displayed for a set period without compromising the native experience of the player.
Advertising can be an additional revenue channel for the owners of the game or virtual goods (such as land) but the value generation will be bounded by rich & immersive experiences that can be created for the users.
### Creator
These are the designers and modelers who are creating game assets or built environment on the virtual worlds and building those immersive content-rich experiences that users crave for. Traditionally, this group is seen as \*for-hire\* for a specific project on behest of the publishers. As such, they have not been part of the advertising value chain.
### Developer
These are the engineers & builders who work alongside the creators to build games and interactive virtual experiences (goal-driven quests, even a simple store walk-in experience) that then lead to users engaging with contents and brands. Traditionally, this group has also not been part of the centralized advertising value chain.
# Advertising
Advertising can be a key driver of commerce in games and virtual worlds, just as it is in the physical world, but the whole experience and infrastructure is fragmented today.
## Advertiser
Advertisers can be traditional businesses, influencers or any other party that would like to promote their brands and services to users through the digital real estate made available by publishers in the games. The advertisers themselves might have digital presence and can target to attract virtual attendees to their properties where they can either buy virtual goods or collect coupons/offers to buy goods from physical stores.
While there are avenues available to advertise, but nothing comes close to the ubiquity, ease of use and capability of traditional product like an ad-manager or campaign management tool in the traditional web2 ecosystem.
### Consumer
These are people like us looking for entertainment and other experiences in the games and virtual worlds. They have been "the product" in the traditional web2 advertisement economy. Again, a group which has been easy to exclude from the advertising value chain to say the least.
###
# Decentralized Ad Infrastructure
Decentralized, tamper-proof ledger and at scale consensus building algorithms that serve as the bedrock of blockchain are the right ingredients to bring transparency and trust into the digital advertising ecosystem while generating value for all the participants of the system including creators and consumers.
## Layered Architecture
# Our approach
Cros provides advertisers, publishers and creators with infrastructure in the form of **APIs and tools**, as well as connectors with popular supply-side and demand-side platforms. Through the use of these APIs, SDKs and tools built for different game platform and familiar SSPs and DSPs, the ad-campaigns and ad-inventory can be matched together with off-chain auction and programmatic bidding.
* The platform models ad-assets, ad-bids, auction formats and ad-impression as first-class blockchain-based primitives providing for a transparent allocation and pricing of advertisements. These **protocol primitives** form the substrate for creating innovative ad-serve and ad-bidding APIs for ease of integration with existing ad-platforms and ad managers.
* The protocol is defined by the smart contract representations and rules. It defines the message and control flow between two or more participating entities to design campaigns, create ad-inventory, submit bids, run auctions and serve ads - everything secured and available for audit on-chain. The housekeeping services specified by the protocol include impression prediction, fraud detection & prevention, and event triggers.
* The protocol token creates incentives for the network of participants to operate rationally and coordinate their actions toward the allocation and pricing of the advertisements. With the right mechanism design, the ad-revenue model is aligned with the token incentives for creators, consumers, advertisers and publishers.
# Blockchain for Advertising
Cros is designing blockchain for digital advertising which will capture the following:
* Ad impressions, type of interaction on the ad, online bids, auctions for allocation of inventory
* Ad budget spent and the conversion rate
* Location of the ad-assets, proof of ad-interaction
* Settlement of ad-revenue
Having all this on chain lets advertisers and other participants to audit and proactively trace each ad-impression to consumer or to an advertising campaign.
Tokenization of the ad-assets and ad-creatives also empowers network participants like creators to unleash their creative, launching novel ways of brand promotion (say 20-sec clip which is a game & a brand promotion mixed together) thereby creating immersive and engaging experiences for consumers. Similarly, the tokenization of attention and consensual data sharing brings value to consumers.
Cros further provides a programmatic interface for online bidding and ad-serving thereby allowing traditional demand-side and supply-side platforms to integrate with the blockchain based advertising infrastructure.
As the network effects take hold, new revenue models can be visualized based on this model. For example, advertisers can provide incentives to publishers based on outcomes or customer actions, leading to definite revenue for the advertiser. Due to the presence of fewer intermediaries, parties can work out a mutually beneficial revenue sharing model to replace the current models.
# Capabilities Map
The layered architecture of Cros platform defines the set of capabilities required to build such a decentralization advertising infrastructure. The next few sections will go into details of these capabilities at a higher-level including *tokenization of assets*, *Core Ad Infrastructure*, *SDKs and APIS*, and an *Ad-specific Layer2 sidechain*.
Capability layers
# Tokenization of Ad Assets
There are physical and non-physical assets like advertisement creatives, ad assets which are part of the advertising value chain. Digitizing such tangible and non-tangible assets and transforming them into tokens is one of the key design principles for Cros while building the decentralized ad infrastructure.
The tokenization, along with underlying crypto economic design, will help with the liquidity, makes the trade & exchange of such assts streamlined and transparent while letting the creators, publishers and other participants define the market prices & transaction costs of such asset exchange.
# Ad Asset NFT
Whatever campaigns advertisers create, they wish to display it within a game or a property in a virtual world. If there's no ad asset, brand advertisements cannot be displayed to targeted audiences.
To make a variety of ad assets available for publishers so that they can choose as per their space and appearance, Cros provided a platform for creators to develop these ad asset NFTs. Publishers can either purchase user generated NFTs or take it on lease for required time and embed them into the games to run the ads of advertisers and earn money against the impressions.
Ad asset NFTs are not necessarily traded between creators and publishers, but any other user interested in passive income can purchase from creators and then either sell or rent it to publishers.
* If the token owner is publishing a game, he/she can deploy the ad-asset and earn income from the displayed ads.
* The token owner can also lease out her Ad Asset NFT to other game publishers and earn a portion of the income from the displayed ads.
# Brand NFTs
The advertisers can also choose to create a NFT of their product or brand and launch that through the brand advertisement. Say, for example, a famous brand of sneakers, while designing an advertisement campaign for a new line of shoes, can also create a NFT collection for the same sneaker shoes.
Cros designs these brand NFT collections such that the consumer watching the advertisement can mint & buy the digital NFT of the advertised product from any of the advertisement assets across the different metaverses using an experience native to that metaverse (example, a 2-minute game quest which is an advertisement and an NFT promotion and a \*shop & mint\* interface).
# Ad Platform
Cros is an advertising infrastructure designed and built on blockchain with non-fungible ad-assets, ad-bids, auction formats, and ad-impressions residing on-chain, providing for transparent allocation and pricing of advertisements in games and virtual worlds.
Cros connects publishers willing to publish ads in games with brands willing to advertise their products through a secure & transparent manner over a decentralized infrastructure fabric built on blockchain.
# Design
### Backend
The backend consists of many smart contracts (programs that run on the Ethereum blockchain) that execute the ad bidding platform's logic and rules, resulting in state changes on the underlying blockchain. Smart contracts are developed in Solidity and deployed as part of the setup and configuration of the ad-bidding platform. The EVM interprets state changes on the global state machine and executes the logic defined in smart contracts. The high-level smart contracts are compiled into bytecode, which the EVM can then execute.
Composable NFTs representing *Adasset* for the ad-auction platform is a key design component. It is defined based on ERC 998 token standard that stores and keeps track of child tokens (ERC 721) representing the individual ad-containers within a scene or game. The token standard is defined to encapsulate multi-resources whereby the output depends on context. Ex: a 2D and 3D image of an advertised product will be represented as different resources within the token. Moreover, mimetic metadata principle is followed whereby layers of metadata are defined such that visual or tech functions updates are handled as in-token ‘update’.
Microservices powered APIs are also part of the backend infrastructure, which will provide off-chain functionality required by the front end applications.
### Blockchain Network
The smart contracts and distributed state are encapsulated in the blockchain, which is a globally distributed and deterministic state machine maintained by a peer-to-peer network of nodes. The standards of consensus that the peers in the network follow are governed by the state changes on this state machine.
### Frontend
The front-end applications defines the user interface logic and communicates with the backend APIs and on-chain hosted smart contracts.
For the smart contracts on-chain, the front-end application must interact with one (or more) of the nodes since each node in the network contains a copy of the smart contracts and all of the distributed states. The node infrastructure is managed by a third-party service provider such as Infura or Alchemy, and the communication layer between the front end and the service provider is based on JSON RPC.
The frontend application also integrates with Metamask and other wallets to make key management and transaction signing simpler for users.
### Decentralized storage
Given that the user pays every time they add new data (a state change) to the blockchain, we must be careful about what data we store on-chain since it can quickly become extremely expensive. In this design, IPFS as a decentralized off-chain data storage solution is used for data storage related to bids, ad slots, media assets, etc. The IPFS system uses a peer-to-peer network to distribute and store data. Decentralization principles are violated when front-end code is hosted on cloud platforms like Azure or AWS. As a result, IPFS or Swarm as a decentralized storage solution will be used to store and host front-end for the distributed application.
### Querying and indexing the blockchain state
Reading data from smart contracts on the blockchain must be well designed for a distributed app to work properly. To query and listen to smart contract events, the Web3.js library will be used. Such events will be emitted whenever a specified state change occurs, and the front-end code will listen for these events to be fired by the smart contracts and perform the appropriate actions. In some cases, the aforementioned technique can result in unnecessary complexity (example, for the bidding process). In such circumstances, the Graph will be used as an off-chain indexing solution. Specific smart contracts will be configured for indexing, including which events and function calls to listen for, as well as how to convert incoming events into entities that the front-end application can query and consume. The Graph indexes blockchain data, allowing us to query on-chain data with low latency in the application logic.
###
# Ads Manager
A dApp for publishers, creators and advertisers
Cros integrates with a variety of publishers including gaming and virtual worlds such as Roblox and Decentraland. These publishers own an inventory of ad-slots on numerous platforms from a traditional advertising perspective such as games, virtual worlds and events in virtual words. Based on the specific aspects of these platforms, each slot is a virtual space, game NPC, an avatar or any other surface where content (a form of media) can be played or displayed for a set period. In other cases, the slot can function similarly to a commercial break within a scheduled programme.\
The publishers deploy ad-assets (like Billboards, holograms, ad-surfaces) and they are automatically available as ad-inventory through the Cros ad-bidding platform. The inventory of impressions is predicted using machine learning models and the same is made available for the auction. Cros ad-bidding platform auctions the inventory to the interested advertisers. The publishers are ranked by the auction algorithm based on their bid spread and the advertisements submitted by them are served at the time and/or place within a virtual event or space determined by their rank, asset category, user behavior attributes and other parameters.
## Publisher's user interface
The distributed app allows publishers to create, update and deploy the ad-assets that are connected to the platform, specifically the ad-bidding and ad-serve services. This is accomplished by following the steps below:
### Step 1
The publisher selects the virtual world where they own the property or space. The virtual space can be part of a virtual event, land, or even a programme. The web application interface is used to discover available scenes or individual components of scenes like a billboard, a wall or an avatar.
### Step 2
The publisher buys or rents the available ad-assets (scenes or components of scene) and deploys them in the game. The ad-asset (NFT) ownership is transferred to the publisher, who is now qualified to receive the earnings from the ad impressions generated on the asset.
## Advertiser's user interface
An advertiser can use the distributed app to design the advertising campaign. This is done through the following steps:
### Step 1
The “creative” components of the advertisement such as audio, video, or static content must be produced in a standard format. The advertiser simply uploads the advertisement to the platform once it has been created. The creative package is uploaded to an IPFS-based distributed and tamper-proof file system.
### Step 2
The advertiser can further define the attributes for advertisement targeting using the web application interface. This includes configuration parameters and settings for publisher events, games, and programmes, as well as days of the week, day parts, demographic and geographic regions. This step algorithmically identifies the type of auction format that advertiser bid will be considered in.
### Step 3
The final stage is to set the bid, which is the amount the advertiser is willing to spend. This is defined using two main parameters: a total budget and a per-advertisement bid. Traditionally, the advertiser specifies a per advertisement bid in terms of "CPM," which is the price per 1000 viewers/listeners. The per advertisement bid unit was chosen since it is well acknowledged by advertisers.
# Bidding and Auction Layer
After collecting all the inventory and bids, the main aim of the auction is to decide on the resource allocation such as the ranking of advertisements and the correct pricing.
We propose a combinatorial auction system as it allows selling a set of ad slots to multiple advertisers. Combinatorial auctions have been a subject of active research (Porter et al., 2003), (Bichler, 2010) as they allow negotiations on a set of heterogeneous items with prices defined for a specific subset of the items for auctions.
A combinatorial clock (CC) auction is proposed as the implementation scheme since it allows several properties of single time bid auctions to be observed in combinatorial auctions. These properties include allocative efficiency, revenue increase, incentive compatibility, and robustness against collusion among others. The scheme uses blockchain technology, as well as a commitment algorithm, smart contracts, and zero-knowledge proof, to secure bidder information from leaking and anonymously verify auction results with all bidders without the use of a third-party auctioneer. Cros is committed to collaborating with the community to improve the capabilities of this platform to support other combinatorial bidding formats in the future, as well as providing a variety of implementations based on academic and research work in this field. (Galal and Youssef, 2018), (Li and Xue, 2021).
## Auction goals
### Inputs
1. From publishers: The advertising inventory is structured as a set of slots, each of which is defined by a time range on a game, event, or programme, as well as some fundamental parameters.
2. From advertisers: All advertisement campaigns that are interested in the inventory are collected here. The daily budget and CPM for each slot are the most basic sources of information provided for each campaign. Additional limitations and preferences can be used to define bid packages or bundles.
### Output
1. The rank: The advertisers will receive information about the auction rank, which will allow them to display creative advertisement content at a specified probability across all qualified ad-assets in the games.
2. Pricing: The pricing indicates how much each advertiser charged for in CPM.
## Protocol description
The protocol outlines a set of smart contracts that encompass NFT minting for advertisement slots, advertisement content, and the entire auction design. The following design properties are outlined considering auction design is the most significant design element for the overall protocol:
1. Bid’s Privacy and Binding: During the bidding phase, the submitted bids and lost bids are hidden from the public and other bidders to prevent bidders' values from being used against them in future auctions. Bidders are obligated to their bids; they cannot deny or amend their bids once they have committed.
2. Public Verifiability: Any individual can verify the correctness of the auction winner proof.
3. Fairness: Rational parties are obligated to follow the proposed protocol to avoid being financially penalized.
The bid price auction is a key component of the overall product design. It is based on a bid auction format designed with a commitment algorithm, a Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) scheme, and a set of smart contracts to secure bidder information from leaking and anonymously verify auction results by any or all bidders. The overall setup can be represented in the table below.
| Notation | Meaning |
| -------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `bi` | Bidder “i” where i belongs K |
| `I` | Set of all bidders \[1,....n] |
| `K` | Set of all ad slots \[1,...k] |
| `pk*` | Set of all ad slots \[1,...k] |
| `pki` | The bid price of the bidder is for item ‘k’. |
| `ri` | The random blinding factor of bidder i. |
| `G, H` | The generating points on specific elliptic curves to encrypt the bid price pi. |
| `Cki` | Commitment price of price pki. |
| `Ck*` | Commitment price of the winning price. |
| `C^k`i | Differential commitment price of C\* and Cki. |
| `pks` | Public key of the smart contract. |
## Bid Pricing Hiding
The auction scheme should have a feature that prevents the verifier from knowing anything about the data until the commitment is revealed. At the same time, the bidder should not be allowed to change the commitment value once it has been revealed. To keep the bidders' bid prices hidden, we deploy a cryptographic commitment system. The scheme is designed up in a way that the data can be temporarily hidden, allowing it to be verified even if the prover (bidder who commits to a value) or the verifier are both biased.
We use Pedersen Commitment (Pedersen, 1991) which is based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) (Miller, 1985) and is used to generate a commitment for a bid price “p” shown in Equation (1).
𝐶(𝑝, 𝑟) = 𝑟 ×𝐺 + 𝑝 ×\_H\_
Even if private data (bid price "p") remains same, the final commitment "C" will change if a random blinding factor "r" is introduced. Pedersen Commitment is a preferable alternative for bid pricing hiding and binding because of this property. The smart contract-generated G and H parameters are two generating points on a specific elliptic curve that provide consensus information to all auction participants. The following is a description of how Pedersen Commitment will be utilized in the auction scheme:
1. The bidder “bi " gets a random blinding factor “ri” and calls the Equation (1) function C(pi , ri) to produce commitment price Ci (i ϵ I).
2. The bidder “bi” publishes Ci to the blockchain and sends E(pi , ri , pks) to the smart contract account. Here “E ( )” is the encryption function to encrypt pi and ri with pks (public key of the smart contract).
3. When the bid deadline arrives, the smart contract opens the commitment. The commitment C \* bound to the winning price p \* is revealed.
4. The differential commitment Ĉi is calculated (as per Equation 2) and information is emitted as event and logged.
Ĉ𝑖 = ∁\*− ∁𝑖 = (𝑟\* − 𝑟𝑖) × 𝐺 + (𝑝 \* − 𝑝𝑖) ×𝐻
\= 𝑟 \* 𝑖 ×𝐺 + 𝑝 \* 𝑖 ×𝐻
𝑖𝑓 𝑝 \* 𝑖 >= 0, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑝\* > 𝑝𝑖
## Verification of Bid Results
Bid verification is not a mandatory step, but any party can choose to verify the results for audit or other purposes. We use a combination of Pedersen Commitment's additive homomorphism property and a Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) algorithm (Ben-Sasson et al., 2018) to establish the binding relations of distinct values for anonymously verifying bid results without disclosing the content of actual bids (except the winning bid). A non-interactive ZKP that does not require a trusted setup and can prove that a given transaction value is within a positive range would be chosen. In short, we will hide the real bid price with the Pedersen Commitment algorithm, then verify the higher bidding price with the differential commitment price Ĉ𝑖 in Equation (2) using a form of ZKP.
The following are the detailed steps for verification work:
### Step 1
Bidder bi recomputes the differential commitment price Ĉij with published C\* and his own commitment price Ci . Where, *Ĉij = C\* - Ci*
### *Step 2*
Bidder bi compares Ĉij with Ĉj (fetched from the log store).
### Step 3
If Ĉij = Ĉi , then C\_\*\_ can be accepted. The next step is for bidder bi to use chosen ZKP algorithm and Ĉi to confirm that the winning price p\* is higher than his own bid price pi . The proof result is compared with the Boolean flag of comparison fetched from the log store.
### Step 4
The optional verification result by the bidder can be published to the blockchain
## Auction phases
The auction process consists of the following different stages: publish, bid, open, verify and settle. Overall, there are four actors: publishers, advertisers, the smart contract and the blockchain. Firstly, the owner of content platforms publishes the available advertisement slots on the blockchain, and advertisers then submit their bids before the deadline. The interaction between the various actors during the auction process is depicted in Figure 8, which are supported at various stages by the smart contract functions.
ad-auction sequence
### Publish phase
The publishers use the publish function in the smart contract to upload inventory (ad-slots) information. The smart contract will verify the user identity before returning the publish authorization to the inventory owner (ad-slot). Remember that the ad-slot inventory ownership is represented by an NFT minted for the publisher. The publisher then sends the smart contract the basic inventory information, auction start and end times, bid security requirements, the smallest number of bidders, and a reserve price (encrypted by a public key of the smart contract). This is mined and saved as a blockchain transaction.
### Bid phase
The bid function in the smart contract will be used by the advertisers who are qualified and permitted to bid from auction start time. Firstly, the bidder’s identity will be verified by the smart contract. The bidder will put a caution deposit of m to the account appointed and supervised by the smart contract. Each bidder bi, provides the bid price pi and a random number ri, which are encrypted by the public key of the smart contract and saved on the blockchain. The bid price, pi will never be revealed by the smart contract. Each bidder bi, calls the Pedersen commitment function to get the commitment price Ci and saves that on the blockchain. The commitment price is encrypted by the private key of the bidder bi such that all the bidders and the publisher of the ad-slots can get the information of Ci by decrypting it with the public key of bi.
### Open phase
At the auction ending time t2, the smart contract counts the bidders attending the auction and checks all bid prices in the auction. If the number of bidders is smaller than n, or all bid prices were smaller than the reserve price pr, the auction is announced as a failed auction. Otherwise, the auction proceeds in the steps outlined subsequently. All bid prices are sorted and the highest bid price p\* is selected as the winning bid price. The commitment price C\* bound to p\* is published to the blockchain by the smart contract. Each differential commitment price C^i is calculated along with the Boolean flag for the comparison p\_\* >\_ pi , these are encrypted with the public key of each bidder by smart contract, emitted as an event and logged.
### Verify phase
This is an optional step, any bidder can choose to verify the results for audit or other purposes, the bidder bi gets the commitment price C \* , the differential commitment price Ĉi and p \*>pi comparison values from the log store. He then recalculates the differential commitment price C \~ i = C\* - Ci and compares C \~ with Ĉ. If they are equal, then the commitment price has been verified by bidder bi . Next, the bidder uses a chosen ZKP algorithm to check p\* > pi with Ĉi , without leaking any information about the winning bid price p\*.
### Settle phase
The smart contract asks the winning bidders to pay the rest of the payment for the ad-slots (p\* - m) to the appointed account and then transfers the full payment p\* to the publisher. The bid security of other bidders is returned to the bidder’s accounts.
# Ad Serve Layer
Cros collects the ad-creatives and other ad-media content from the advertisers as part of the campaign design. A decentralized storage system is used to distribute the content to the ad-assets (such as holograms, billboards, wall displays) within the games or pulled by the game engines through the ad-serve API.
A reference is maintained between the ad-creative's link with a campaign, along with metadata about the size, display formats and fidelity associated with the experience (such as 3D or 2D display). This metadata is used by the ad-assets to finetune the advertising display and experience shown to the end users. For the decentralized storage, the Inter-Planetary File System (IFFS) is the technology of choice being matched with wide coverage provided by a service provider like Cloudflare with their IPFS gateway service.
Moving to a truly decentralized ad-serve system sometime in future is top of mind for the Cros team. This will consist of a decentralized content distribution system based on IPFS + protocols like Filecoin/Ceramic to compensate nodes for storage & serving of the ad-content. It will also provide Cros with a strong censorship-resistance which will be balanced with community driven content moderation using token curated registry and other primitives.
# AI Features
Artificial Intelligence (including Generative AI) is changing our approach to content, brand promotion, personalization and optimization thereby impacting advertising across the value chain.. Cros is enabling AI powered features across different areas of the platform and toolset available for brands, creators and developers.
### User Input and Segmentation
Cros plans to use machine learning models to analyze audience data to create precise segments which can then be used to define campaign goals and target audience much more effectively by the brands.
### Ad Creation and Targeting
With human guidance, Cros uses the Generative AI based tools to generate ad copy and designs in multiple flavors and combinations tailored to the audience. This extends from using conversational AI agents, image & video generation tools to multi-modal foundation models tailored for the games and advertising domain. The Generative AI toolset is constrained to use only brand-safe materials choosing from a curated gallery of the company's own assets. The toolset has further been tailored for 3D graphic models and animations for the targeted gaming platforms.
### Campaign Launch, Optimization and Expansion
After launching a campaign, Cros provides built-in AI features to automate scheduling, bidding and optimization. Based on continuous monitoring of key metrics, the AI tools can also suggest optimizations, real time adjustments and scaling a campaign based on defined objectives and goals.
### Creation of Game Assets
Lately, huge advances have been in Generative AI models that are multimodal - trained on multiple types of content - such as images, text, 3D models, audio - and can produce multimodal outputs. Cros plans to create tailored suite of Generative AI tools leveraging state of the art multimodal models that will enable very user to build immersive 3D experiences for different gaming platforms. These tools will assist first time users to rapidly prototype new ideas and generate entire new scenes simply by typing a prompt like "create a magical forest with different kind of trees, make the forest canopy and floor be dense like in a rainforest".
###
# SDK & APIs
Cros Ad platform is designed and built with `composability` as the key design principle.
* A **Software Development Kit (SDK)** for the creator and developer community to build innovative advertising and brand engagement experiences is one way to build and extend the platform capabilties for different game platforms by providing the right set of tools & libraries in the hands of the people.
* A modular & composable set of open APIs for demand partners, publisher platforms or mixed reality platforms for them to connect to the platform, publish an ad-campaign, submit a bid or fetch and serve an ad on the device - in other words programmatically extend the ad platform to their applications or products.
Composable APIs
##
# Game SDK
Cros provides Software Development Kit (SDK) for gamecreators and publishers to help them design, build and deploy advertising enabled assets within games. The SDK is built in layers of abstraction over the capabilities provided by native gaming platforms such as Roblox. It exposes objects such as `context` and `capabilities` that are used to differentiate between the generic and specific (to a game) functionality exposed through the SDK.
The following diagram shows the layer of abstraction (specification to generalization) that SDK provides for publishers, developers & creators:
Software Development Kit for metaverses
# Open APIs
## Ad Bidding APIs
Cros provides bidding APIs for third-party demand partners to compete for the ad-inventory across games in a set of auctions. The API will also include reporting, traffic and billing information in future.
The bidding APIs collect bid responses from third party demand partners which are channeled back to the auction engine. Based on the ad-inventory and other parameters, an appropriate auction format is chosen, and a unified auction is run for all the bid responses to determine the most efficient allocation of inventory.
Ad Bidding APIs are designed keeping IAB certified version of the OpenRTB spec in mind making it easy to integrate with DSPs compliant with OpenRTB specification.
## Ad Serve APIs
All deployed Cros ad-assets on different game platforms fetch the advertisements through an ad-serving API. This API is bundled in different configurations based on ad-media, ad-packaging for a native experience in a game and other parameters.
The Ad server APIs make it possible for native experiences to be built by each game or gaming platform such that Cros Ad platform serves the most appropriate ad-media based on environment and user context while the display and interaction is controlled by the game - which could be through a device or any other medium.
# Layer2 Chain
As we have discussed in this paper, the current advertising value chain is riddled with fraudulent ad-impressions, bot traffic and other problems. A truly participatory approach of building a decentralized ad infrastructure that generates value for all participants (including creators & consumers) while being secure and tamper-proof demands first-principles thinking and composing the said infrastructure from the basic building blocks of blockchain & web3 technology. Such an approach also provides the required flexibility to make tradeoffs between security, scalability and decentralization for the problem in hand.
For example, use case specific validation is required to avoid ad asset duplication, which can lead to significant bot activity towards fraudulent ad views & impressions. Similarly, most brands have an evolving set of requirements around brand identity and moderation of the associated content which will get more stringent over time. Furthermore, much of the history of ad-bidding could be viewed as IP (ex: participation history in ascending bids for a specific auction or publisher site). This includes providing an environment which allows for selecting the right balance between governance, confidentiality, compliance, and ad-impression validation and verification. As a result, Cros will be building a "L2 chain" those processes and executes ad-related transactions while also submitting an aggregation of its most recent blocks to the principal chain. Cros Network chain will be described and specified in depth in a white paper that will be released soon.
# Tech Roadmap
# Modularity and Composability
Blockchains allow us to redefine what is valuable while also establishing new networks based on economic, social, and cryptographic principles. Through a process termed "combinatorial evolution" by economist Brian Arthur in "Nature of Technology," (Arthur, 2009) modularity and composability produce a set of "building blocks" that expand what is achievable. Modularity operates at multiple layers in blockchains; the next section outlines how we are building the Cros network for composability and modularity:
1. ERC20, ERC721, ERC1155 and ERC998 are shared standards that make creating uniform experiences across a wide range of products and use cases easier. CROS is building on top of these token standards to define advertisement related asset formats, metadata and contracts such that a domain specific standard can be created among publishers, advertisers, metaverses, exchanges and marketplaces. They provide composability by allowing other network participants to build new assets and contracts based on our smart contracts, which function similarly to APIs from earlier computing platforms.
2. We combine tokens, smart contracts, and mechanism design aspects to build crypto-economic primitives specific for a decentralized advertising infrastructure. These are encapsulated as protocol, which abstracts the workflow of solving a specific problem and serves yet another reusable modular and composable capability. The CROS community will be the driving force behind defining and developing various modular crypto-economic primitives, examples include the following:
* A modular primitive for moderating the ad content based on other composable primitives like Token Curated Registries (Asgaonkar and Krishnamachari, 2018), RFT (Regner et al., 2019).
* A reputation system as an intersection of curation and identity for auctions and other use cases.
* Game wearables & asset exchange protocols tailored for in-game or cross-game interoperability using composable NFTs, interop protocols like 0x and auction mechanisms.
Advertising ecosystem is complicated, and these primitives alone will not bring about the changes we require. They interact with a variety of systems, including the enigmatic sociobiological systems we refer to as humans. That is why, among other things, we will need to invest in governance, community, culture, and professional development.
# Interoperability
The major challenge with collaboration of any kind over blockchain networks is the protocols and complexities involved in the seamless and affordable transferring of assets or data between multiple blockchain systems. Cros proposes to overcome this challenge by deploying Blockchain bridges to enable cross-organizational collaboration across multiple chains. Bridges allow information and assets to be transferred between blockchains, allowing for easier collaboration. ChainBridge is an extensible cross-chain communication protocol. Cros will start using the "ChainBridge" design-pattern, from Polygon, for cross network communication and asses or data transfer. The ChainBridge operates on three types of contracts in each chain, referred to as Bridge/Handler/Target, as well as relayers to communicate between chains. These three types of contracts work with Relayer, an application that listens to the events emitted by these contracts under each chain and votes for a proposal in the destination chain's Bridge contract when it receives a "Deposit" event.
Non-fungible token standards (ERC 721, ERC 1155 and others) allow NFTs to move easily across multiple ecosystems. When a developer or creator designs a new NFT ad-space or slot for a game platform, for example, it may be instantly viewed in dozens of wallet providers, tradeable on marketplaces, and displayable in game worlds. This provides another layer of interoperability that Cros aims to utilize and promote through active community participation.
# $CROS Token
$CROS tokens are an ERC20 governance token for Cros Advertising Ecosystem with a limited supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens.
# Tokenomics
Cros plans to issue a total of 1,000,000,000 utility tokens with the below distribution
| Distribution | Amount (%) | Vesting |
| --------------------------------------- | ----------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Seed Round Sale | 100,000,000 (10%) | 2% at TGE, 3 months cliff, linear 11 months |
|
Private Sale 1 Private Sale 2
| 100,000,000 (10%) |
5% at TGE, 3 months cliff, linear 12 months 20% at TGE, linear 8 months
|
| Public Sale | 20,000,000 (2%) | 20% at TGE, linear 4 months |
| Team & Advisors | 70,000,000 (7%) | 8 months cliff, linear 40 months |
| Airdrops & Security Bug Rewards | 120,000,000 (12%) | Linear 10 months |
| Network Bootstrapping Rewards | 100,000,000 (10%) | Linear 10 months |
| Growth & Community Rewards | 150,000,000 (15%) | Linear 11 months |
| Additional Development Fund | 60,000,000 (6%) | Linear 10 months |
| Listing and MM | 100,000,000 (10%) | Linear 10 months |
| Ecosystem Fund | 180,000,000 (18%) | Linear 10 months |
Token vesting is strategically designed to ensure a controlled release of tokens over a specified period, preventing a sudden influx of tokens into the market. This approach is beneficial in balancing the demand and supply of tokens, as it ensures a steady flow of tokens over a prolonged period, rather than a large release in a short time frame. By doing so, token vesting promotes market stability and encourages a gradual increase in demand for the tokens as adoption grows.
###
# Token Utility
Cros Chain is a cutting-edge Ethereum Layer 2 and AI platform for in-game advertising; connecting advertisers, developers, and 3 billion players (#DePIN).
The $CROS token has four distinct utility functions: Staking, Validation, Governance, and Payments.\
\
Cros revenue is generated from in-game ad impressions like Google, Meta, TikTok, etc. Ad revenues are then shared between Cros, game developers, and billions of players.
$CROS token has to be staked:
* By game players and developers to earn ad revenues.
* By advertisers paying for ads with $CROS token to get discounts and cashback.
* By community, investors, and partners to participate in Cros governance.
* By validators to validate ad impressions on Cros L2 chain.
The digital cryptographically secured utility token ($CROS Token) is a major component of the ecosystem on the Cros Network.
$CROS Token will be issued on the Ethereum blockchain as ERC-20-compliant digital tokens. Its primary function is to facilitate smooth operations within the network, and it is intended solely for use as a utility token.
It will allow token holders to stake the token and earn rewards during the initial network bootstrapping phase. The token holders will play a critical part in the governance and evolution of the network and the overall ecosystem.
They will be able to propose and vote on changes to the network’s development including parameters such as Payments, Staking, Liquidity, and ad-revenue distribution between Cros, Game Developers, and Gamers.
# Token Validation and Staking
$CROS Tokens are expected to provide economic incentives for participants to contribute to and maintain the ecosystem of the Cros Network. The computational resources are required for performing various functions on the Cros Network, such as validating transactions and publishing proofs, thus providers of these services/resources would be rewarded with $CROS tokens (i.e., "validating" on the Cros Network) to maintain the network integrity. $CROS Token will be used as a unit of exchange to quantify and pay for the costs of consumed computational resources. $CROS Token is an integral and indispensable part of the Cros Network, as, without the $CROS Token, there would be no incentive for users to expend resources to participate in activities or provide services for the benefit of the entire ecosystem on the Cros Network.
Users may be required to stake $CROS Token to participate in the consensus or any validation process on the Cros Network. This is an indication of the user's commitment to the process. $CROS Token would thus be used as a deterrent to punish stakers for various offenses by requiring them to stake $CROS Token before being allowed to participate in the ecosystem. In the case that a staker commits a violation, $CROS Token will be deducted.
It should be noted that $CROS Token is non-refundable and cannot be exchanged for cash (or its equivalent value in any other virtual currency) or any Governing Body payment obligation. The Issuer or any affiliate; does not represent or confer on the token holder any right of any kind to the Governing body, the Issuer (or any of its affiliates), or the Issuer's revenues or assets, including without limitation any right to receive future dividends, revenue, shares, ownership right or stake, share or security, any voting, distribution, redemption, liquidation, proprietary (including all forms of intellectual property or license rights), or other financial or legal rights or equivalent rights, or any other form of participation in or relating to the Cros Network. The Governing body, the Issuer, and/or their service providers; are not intended to represent any rights under a contract for differences or any other contract whose goal or pretended purpose is to secure a profit or avoid a loss. It is not intended to be a representation of money (including electronic money), security, a commodity, a bond, a debt instrument, or any other form of financial instrument or investment. It is not a loan to the Governing body, the Issuer, or any of its affiliates. It is not intended to represent a debt owed by the Governing body, the Issuer, or any of its affiliates, and no profit is expected. It also does not provide the token holder any ownership or other interest in the Governing body, the Issuer, or any of its affiliates.
After the token sale, the Issuer (or its affiliate) will hold the contributions in the token sale. The contributors will have no economic or legal right to or beneficial interest in these contributions or the assets of that entity. If a secondary market or exchange for trading $CROS Token develops, it will be run and operated completely independently of the Governing body, the Issuer, $CROS Token sales, and the Cros Network. Neither the Governing Body nor the Issuer will create secondary markets for $CROS Token, nor will act as an exchange.
# Cros Governance
Simply described, governance is the process through which an organization or community comes to a consensus on specific issues or concepts and subsequently makes decisions. As a result, the governing body, topics, and governance processes must be carefully selected while considering external factors and the platform structure.
# Governing Body
The ideal governance system for service oriented blockchain platforms like Cros allows all platform members to participate and make smart decisions quickly. However, in a decentralized setting, this ideal model is difficult to implement. Cros addresses this problem by developing a governance structure composed of elected contributors who share the core principles of Cros platform. The decision-making body must be able to make the best possible decision for the development of the platform based on a solid understanding of metaverse and blockchain technology, as well as a keen interest in the platform. Currently, however, the average blockchain user may lack the knowledge or interest in blockchain that is necessary to participate in Cros’s decision-making process. For example, Ethereum’s DAO has recorded a low voter participation rate (less than 10%). Because of the low participation, it is difficult to claim that any of the decisions represent the entire platform or present the future direction of the platform. Because of this, blockchain developers and communities insist a token-based voting system (with votes proportional to the number of tokens held) should be implemented rather than an identity-based voting system. This raises the issue of power being concentrated in the hands of those only interested in short-term financial gain.
We believe making platform contributors the main components of the governance structure, that is consistent with Cros' goals. Platform contributors are either service providers or those who have contributed to the development of the service in different ways (e.g., platform ecosystem contribution), have interests aligned with the long-term progress of the platform, and have a basic understanding of the platform. Platform contributors are more likely to make decisions that benefit the platform's long-term growth, and these foresight decisions will benefit everyone who uses the platform while also increasing the overall platform worth.
# Cros Governance Council
The Cros Governance Council is a body with the authority to make decisions on a variety of governance issues. The Governance Council's early members will be limited to trusted individuals and organizations to ensure its trustworthiness. This decision was made to allow the protocol to be improved quickly during the platform development and stabilization stages. However, as the platform develops, more participants and 24 token holders will be able to join in the governance process. The Cros Governance Council will be composed of members of the Cros Governance Council and the Chairman.
# Governance Topics
The following three areas are the main topics that can be decided through the governance structure, and proposals that require additional decision-making can be introduced for consideration in a regular or temporary meeting for review. The Cros Governance Council must make decisions that are in Cros' best interests.
1. **Technology**: Matters related to the technical update of the platform. Here the issues on the blockchain’s basic structure (e.g., Account Structure), new features (e.g., L2 solution), or software update schedule are included.
2. **Economy**: The additional issuance of CROS and its distribution structure, change in transaction fees, changes in Proof of Contribution service evaluation methods, Cros Improvement Reserve spending approval, and more issues are included in this category.
3. **Governing Rule**: The governance subjects and processes, as well as the rules for the responsibilities and rights of governing bodies, are included in this category.
# Cros Governance Roadmap
The bodies involved in governance must work in the long-term interests of Cros rather than for their interests. They must actively participate in the voting process. Additionally, all Cros Governance Council members must secure computing resources that are greater than the platform requirements and stake a set amount of CROS, either their own or from third parties. Cros Network Inc. will play several roles in governance related matters throughout the initial development phase to ensure seamless platform development and stabilization. In the future, however, other bodies will gradually take greater roles in the decision making process, and they will have the right to participate independently.
# Product Roadmap
The product roadmap is divided into two core phases. The first phase focuses on building core platform and empowering the game publishers, creators and advertisers. The second phase is about decentralization and scaling the ad infrastructure for other gaming platforms and virtual worlds.\
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Note that the technology primitives such as modularity, composability, safety & security, and interoperability will be an integral part of the quarterly milestones.
## Phase 1
#### Q2 2024
* Cros SDK v1 for Decentraland
* Ad Manager for Advertisers
* Ad Manager Dashboard for Publishers
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**Q3 2024**
* Cros SDK v2 with Unity plugins
* Support for Android
* Ad Manager AI Capabilities
* $CROS Token
**Q4 2024**
* Support for Playstation
* Support for Xbox
* Cros API for Ad Bidding
## Phase 2
#### Q1 2025
* Cros L2 Chain
* Support for Nintendo
* Ad Manager for Metaverse Creators
* 3D Ads
**Q2-Q3 2025**
* Support for Roblox
* Cros SDK v3 with Roblox plugins
* Cros API for Ad Serve
* Updated Creator & Developer tooling
**Q4 2025**
* Cros L2 Chain enhancements
* Ad Manager enhancements