THE
WOOLONG
Ethereum makes the concept of the Woolong, the digital cash used in the Cowboy Bebop universe, into a reality.
The Woolong Protocol: A Technical Blueprint
The Wallet: From Seed Phrase to Smartcard
Spike doesn't carry a hardware wallet or memorize a 24-word seed phrase. He uses a simple smartcard. To make that a reality, we need technologies like Account Abstraction (ERC-4337), which separates the wallet from the key. This allows for social recovery, paying transaction fees with any token, and eventually, the simple tap-to-pay experience a bounty hunter needs.
The Network: Beyond a Single Rollup
Ethereum is the solar system’s settlement hub, but no single rollup will serve every purpose. For a true "Woolong" to exist, we need seamless interoperability between rollup execution environments that all anchor to Ethereum. Emerging cross-rollup messaging and shared-sequencing protocols aim to let value and state move between rollups as effortlessly as the Bebop jumps between worlds.
The Currency: Stability in a Volatile System
You can't buy noodles if the price of your money swings 10% in an hour. The Woolong is stable. In our world, stablecoins (pegged to assets like the US Dollar) are the solution. They provide the low-volatility medium of exchange needed for a currency to be used for everyday commerce, not just speculation.
The Ghost: The Need for Privacy
A bounty hunter's ledger should be private. On a public blockchain, every transaction is visible. For true electronic cash, you need privacy. Protocols like Tornado Cash pioneered onchain transaction mixing to break the link between sender and receiver. This technology is essential for a future where your financial history isn't an open book.
Inter-Solar System Police Bounty Board
Click on a bounty to see the dossier.
Woolong Converter
*Live conversion rates powered by CoinGecko. Based on 1 Woolong ≈ 1 JPY.
Open-source
Nobody owns the Ethereum network or protocol, meaning ether can be used by any party, and could become a universal currency like woolongs.
Instant
For most transactions, you can confirm transfer completion instantly. For larger transactions, waiting 2 minutes will provide a greater than 99.9999% assurance that you've received the funds.
Real scarcity
Despite the Ethereum network being distributed and publicly accessible, and its unit of currency being digital, the number of ether that will be generated is pre-defined, and cannot be changed.
Digital
With ether, like with woolongs, you never need to carry physical money. Everything is digital.
Peer-to-Peer
The Ethereum network has no central authority. Peers on the global network create the payment transfer processor that is Ethereum.
Always-on
With a connection to the internet, you can receive and transfer ether 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, because the peer-to-peer network never sleeps. This makes them digital cash, like woolongs.
Woolongs in Cowboy Bebop
Woolong Conversion Rate
Michael Surbrook estimates that one Woolong is worth approximately one real-world Japanese Yen:
A note on money. The standard currency in Cowboy Bebop is the woolong. Its is roughly equal to one present-day Japanese yen. A sample prices: Appledelphis's bounty (fake) -- 50.000000 (i.e. 50) woolongs; 1 watermelon -- 1,000 woolongs; to ship a package from the Venus starport to the desert -- 5,000 woolongs; COD on a package shipment -- 6,300 woolongs; toll for gate passage -- roughly 7,000 woolongs; Whitney's bounty -- 19,800 woolongs; fine/bounty for littering -- 20,000 woolongs; COD for betadeck and tape -- 31,500 woolongs, typical bounty -- 1 million woolongs, Asimov Solensan's bounty -- 2.5 million woolongs; Faye's bounty -- 6 million woolongs; reward for the return of Ein, the stolen data dog -- 8 million woolongs; Chess Master Hex's bounty -- 12 million woolongs; Faye's debt -- 300,028,000 woolongs.
This makes a woolong equivalent to a little bit more than 1¢ USD. One ether, as of December 24th, 2016, is worth $7.35 USD, so given a woolong is worth 1-2 cents, a woolong has a value equivalent to approximately 0.001 - 0.002 ether.
Therefore, a woolong is a good approximation of 1 milliether (also known as a finney, 1 finney = 0.001 ether), and could be used interchangeably with the term, as a unit of ether.
The Woolong Wallet
The Cowboy Bebop episode 'Waltz for Venus' showcases an electronic wallet used to transfer woolongs stored on smart cards. The wallet has a number pad through which the amount of woolongs to be transferred is inputted.
It also has two card reader slots, allowing two woolong cards to be inserted in the wallet, and woolong transferred between them. It's not shown if the woolong wallet also allows authentication of transfers from woolong-holding smartcards, using the input pad to enter a password.
The Bounty Hunter's Handshake: State Channels
The instant, private transactions Spike performs aren't just science fiction. The core mechanics can be achieved today with a technology known as state channels. It's a private ledger between two parties, secured by the main blockchain. While state channels have historically relied on project-specific protocols, the community is moving toward standardization with proposal like ERC-7824. This draft proposal aims to create a common framework for state channels, making them a more accessible and integral part of Ethereum's modular scaling strategy.
Instant Verification & No Wasted Funds
Before you transfer a multi-million Woolong bounty, you need to know it's going to the right person. With a state channel, you can send 1 Woolong as a test. Your counterparty sees it instantly, confirming the connection. No more sending a fortune to the wrong address because your fingers slipped.
Milestone Payments & Streaming Money
Many sci-fi stories show money moving incrementally — think of a progress bar filling from 0% to 100%. State channels make this common trope a practical reality. You can 'stream' payments second-by-second for an ongoing service or release funds precisely as job milestones are met, all without paying gas for each tiny update. It allows for a true cash-like flow, something even the Bebop's tech didn't show.