A new DeFi project could let smart contracts buy physical goods

Boson Protocol, a project that seeks to connect the real world of physical commerce to smart contracts, has announced a successful $350,000 seed round on Monday.

The project is creating the "Building blocks for next-gen dCommerce apps" by providing a way to redeem blockchain tokens into their real-world physical counterpart.

The project received an over-subscribed investment round led by Outlier Ventures, joined by Ocean Protocol's Trent McConaghy and others.

Justin Banon, the project's founder, told Cointelegraph that the purpose of Boson is "Enabling decentralized commerce with minimal arbitration, like a DEX for physical assets."

The NFT represents a two-way escrow between the buyer and seller, which seeks to ensure that the exchange of the physical good occurs in an orderly fashion.

Boson Protocol falls outside the traditional focus on financial markets seen in DeFi.

"Boson's most important bridging function is connecting the physical world with DeFi, allowing users to purchase physical goods and services directly via a smart contract, in an entirely permissionless way."

Boson's trustless exchange mechanism, as detailed by its whitepaper, involves complex interplay between various parties in many different scenarios.

The mechanism appears to show similar benefits and drawbacks to tBTC, a trustless bridging mechanism from Bitcoin to Ethereum.

The project has often been criticized for being much more complex than centralized solutions like Wrapped BTC, but that appears to be dictated by the wish to maintain it completely trustless.