Ephemeral Owner
Periodic, extendable ownership rights.
The Hourglass Protocol attempts to redefine ownership as we know it from traditional on-chain digital assets. For this purpose, one of the main features of our application is the Ephemeral Owner.
An ephemeral owner is a type of owner who possesses a given asset for a finite time, predefined by the issuer of the asset. Winning a bid or buying a given asset on the open market does not grant the buyer full rights over the asset, but only guarantees them a periodic right of ownership, and the right to all goods and utilities associated with the asset.
Moreover, the ephemeral owner model forces every owner to declare in advance the price at which they are willing to relinquish their periodic ownership rights to the asset and transfer them to a third party. Declaring a price simultaneously involves listing the asset for sale on the open market, without the possibility of editing the declared price.
The ephemeral owner model allows for the extension of one's ownership rights. This is done through the Harberger Tax. As mentioned earlier, every ephemeral owner must declare the price at which they are willing to sell their ownership right. At the same time, the declared value is used as a base for calculating the tax, that the owner must pay to extend their ownership period.
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