Written in March 2019 and revised in September 2026. The hexal token described here was an idea we explored and never launched. Hexology is not a cryptocurrency company. What endures is the idea at its centre: a marketplace that opens up the moment people meet.
Using the Hex Beacon as a hardware wallet was one of many ideas we nurtured in 2019, and so was a plan for a digital token of our own, the hexal.
It was born of a simple realisation. The Hex Beacon opens a window into your digital world, and in that moment of discovery, when people are connecting with you and your content, what if they could buy that t-shirt, artwork, product or service right there and then, without having to touch or scan a thing?
Discovering the people around you, and making contact with them, sets up the perfect moment to buy and sell. We imagined a wallet inside our free app that would let anyone turn any location into their own point of sale, make sales without carrying cash, and complete every transaction in a moment.
A user scenario might have gone like this:
Someone sets up a pop-up shop and uses the Hex Beacon to share images of the items on sale with people passing by. A notification appears in the Hexology app, leading to a page where the passer-by can buy an item with a single tap, without touching or scanning a thing.
The idea was that the buyer pays simply by being near the seller: no card, nothing to touch or scan. How the token was used would be up to its holder, whether to sell products or services, or to unlock content and experiences inside the app.
What the roadmap imagined
The token was one strand of a wider roadmap.
- An immersive media platform, where creators could publish augmented, virtual and mixed reality content, and charge to view or take part in it.
- A web portal where people could log in, create, manage and understand their content from a desktop browser.
- A software development kit, so developers could build the Hex Beacon into their own systems, create custom experiences inside the Hexology app, and extend the platform with plugins of their own.
The marketplace
At the heart of it all was a marketplace: a place where innovators, developers and content creators could meet, trade and build on one another’s work, and where the people around you became an audience and a market at the same time.
Where the ideas went
The token was never launched, but much of the thinking around it found other forms. Augmented reality arrived in the Hexology app in 2023, and our web app, for desktop, tablet and smartphone, followed. The Hex Beacon remains Hexology’s own hardware, available on request. And the conversation that began with how the beacon brings your digital media into the physical world has grown into the work Hexology does today: placing stories, collections and culture in the places where they belong.
