Decentralized encyclopedia startup Everipedia is working on improving user experience and expanding its blockchain ecosystem, with a new user interface, more languages to be added to the platform, and new decentralized apps (DApps) under development, the startup said on Thursday.

Everipedia launched its blockchain network in August 2018, allowing users to begin staking IQ tokens. IQ tokens are a central component of the incentive structure within Everipedia’s protocol, which rewards users for curating and editing articles. IQ tokens are also used for governance, allowing holders to vote on issues such as determining what sources can be cited for an article, and IQ network upgrades.

A spokesperson for the company told CoinJournal that Everipedia users have staked a total of 93 million IQ to participate in content curation, editing and voting. There are currently about 4.5 billion IQ tokens in circulation for a maximum supply of 10 billion IQ tokens. About 20,000 transactions are being processed weekly on the network, a figure the company expects to go up significantly with the launch of the new user interface, the person said.

The new interface for Everipedia.org aims to significantly improve the user experience and enable Everipedia’s global community to grow on a much larger scale, the company said. The goal is to create a new user experience that targets regular Internet consumers and editors of traditional encyclopedias.

“Since day one, our goal has been to make a platform accessible to everyone,” said Theodor Forselius, CEO and co-founder of Everipedia.

“The new user interface will set a new precedent for how DApps can bring blockchain technology beyond the sphere of blockchain enthusiasts and to the masses.”

Expanding beyond the blockchain encyclopedia

Everipedia is also expanding the IQ network beyond the blockchain encyclopedia with several new DApps in development. Everipedia is using in-house resources but also providing necessary funds to other teams developing DApps using the IQ token, the startup said.

Some examples of DApps under development include a prediction market, oracle service, on-chain facts DApp and a Quora alternative using blockchain technology.

“The development of new apps powered by the IQ token is the next step in truly creating a decentralized consumer DApp network around a single token,” said Sam Kazemian, president and co-founder of Everipedia. “We’re very excited to build these apps using EOS.IO technology and increase the value and utility of the IQ token along with it.”

Everipedia has completed the importation of Korean and Mandarin Wikipedia content and plans to add more languages in the near future including Spanish, French and Italian. The company is targeting markets that include China, Korea, Latin America and Russia, and will be expanding its team size in Santa Monica, Stockholm, China and Korea to support its geographic expansion.

“With the launch of the new platform, we will be focusing most of our efforts on expanding Everipedia globally,” the spokesperson said. “That means launching Everipedia in new languages and building large communities in new countries.”

“We have already hired community managers in China and Korea, where we already have large organic communities to help prepare for a more comprehensive expansion in each country after the launch of the new user interface.”

Founded in 2014, Everipedia launched its website in early 2015 as a fork of Wikipedia. The mission, the company said, was to build the most accessible online encyclopedia that’s not as restrictive as Wikipedia.

In December 2017, the company announced plans to move to generating edits and storing information using the EOS blockchain. Blockchain allowed it to add an incentive system that rewards content creators and editors for contributing.

The model aims to make feasible a fully-autonomous encyclopedia that does not need to rely on advertisements or donations, the company said. Additionally, the decentralized nature of how the articles are stored using blockchain technology makes the network un-censorable.

In February, Everipedia raised a US$30 million investment from a group of strategic investors led by Galaxy Digital’s EOS.IO Ecosystem Fund with participation from the Distributed Network Advisors (DNA) Fund and others.