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Ink has the power to create, disrupt, and adapt to the world’s largest online marketplaces by publicly sharing reputation information on the Ethereum blockchain.
Due to its decentralized nature, sellers can bring their reputation with them to sell on multiple marketplaces at the same time or move from one to another without having to rebuild their reputation.
Buyers can also view any seller’s reputation and confidently pay using escrow contracts with optional third party mediation. Payments can be made directly using XNK or converted to and from fiat currencies like USD.
It is surprising to see their approach to the reputation system. Ink Protocol introduces proof of payment on the blockchain.
After every completed Ink transaction, the buyer can leave feedback for the seller about the completed transaction. Feedback consists of a rating and a comment about the transaction, which are stored as data on the Ethereum blockchain. The feedback entry references the id of the transaction that the seller was involved in and can be seen by anyone with access to the public Ethereum blockchain and Ink Smart Contract. Any person or marketplace will then be able to look up the feedback history for a specific seller to determine their trustworthiness before choosing to buy from that seller.
Ink Protocol’s Background
The team behind Ink Protocol has been working on the project since June 2017. The idea emerged when they were discussing ways decentralization is impacting p2p marketplaces. The idea of turning Listia, the current company, into developing the Ink Protocol was born.
Listia already has 8 years of experience with p2p marketplaces. The company is well-known because of the Listia marketplace. It is a marketplace for free stuff where you can give away stuff you don’t need anymore and get stuff you want in return for free. They want to extract it into a layer that anyone can use to build on or use within existing peer-to-peer marketplaces, eventually spurring the development of fully decentralized ones.
Token Use
Gee-Hwan Chuang, Co-Founder and CEO of Ink Protocol explained the use of the token to us: “The token is a key component of Ink Protocol, and in addition to distributing it to existing Listia users; we wanted to distribute them widely to the community at large. They will be useful immediately after the sale, unlike most other tokens out there. On day one, you will be able to use them to buy and sell goods in a peer-to-peer way. So anyone that has them can derive real utility from them right away.”
Concluded, the XNK token is the underlying currency used in all Ink Protocol transactions. XNK is also staked in the contract during escrow, earned by mediators for the mediation services they provide on transactions in case of a conflict.
Major Competitors
Monetha just performed an ICO, raising $37 million dollars. Both, Monetha as Ink Protocol have the same idea: “Build transferable, independent, universal and transparent reputation to boost commerce. No more uncertainty while purchasing”. However, the goals for each project are different, CEO Gee-Hwan explains:
- XNK is focused on decentralizing peer-to-peer marketplaces as opposed to e-commerce.
- XNK has a big focus on escrow, mediation, and dispute resolution.
- Ink Protocol doesn’t charge a network fee and their token is more of a general cryptocurrency than a security that gives holders a payout of the fees.
Milestones
Gee-Hwan Chuang told us: “The main milestone is the full launch of the Ink Protocol contract and integration into Listia. This will be done at the Token launch, right after the sale. At that point, anyone will be able to use Ink Protocol for transactions or build marketplaces and apps on top of it. After that, we will be creating a super easy-to-use mobile app that people can use on any marketplace, like craigslist etc.”
Team Formation and Culture
The co-founders – Gee-Hwan Chuang and James Fong – met while studying Electrical Engineering at Cornell University, and the rest of the team was hired at Listia over the years.
Ink Protocol’s Goal
Gee-Hwan Chuang helped us understand the goal of Listia: “We see Listia becoming a fully decentralized marketplace that runs completely on Ink Protocol. We also see Ink Protocol integrated into dozens of large marketplaces and hundreds of new marketplace startups that can use Ink Protocol to get to market quickly and efficiently. Users will also be using Ink Protocol as the preferred payment and reputation system in all local and ad-hoc transactions… think of craigslist, internet forums, etc.”
Ink Pay
On top of integrating with the Listia marketplace, Listia will also create a standalone payments app, called Ink Pay, so users of other marketplaces such as Craigslist can build a reputation and start using Ink immediately without having to wait for those marketplaces to integrate.
Pros
Team: The team has a history of a successful and growing startup (Listia) which is also backed by respected investors like Ycombinator, Andressen Horowitz, Naval Ravikant, and more.
Cons
Market penetration: No established partnerships for the Inkprotocol but Listia. Though credits from the Listia Network will be changed to XNK, people right now earn Credits for affiliating users or listing products and do not actually buy Credits for money.
In Conclusion
Ink Protocol is a great project tackling a huge problem in the world of decentralized p2p marketplaces. Trust is key. A lot of scams happen on a daily basis because there is no global trust system in place. We like the idea that reputation is based on earlier transactions and feedback. In addition, you can trade fee-free on Listia.