ICO Spotlight | BizShake - Advancing the Sharing Economy Using Blockchain Technology

INTRODUCTION

My Dad owned a house with a two car garage, but he barely could park one car in it. The other parking space was used to store his power tools, bicycles, sports equipment, and other things that weren’t used on a daily basis. As a teenager, that bothered me, but I didn’t really know exactly why. I swore to myself that I would never accumulate the same amount of stuff that my Dad did and I would use the garage as it was originally intended: a place to park cars.

I managed to keep my promise, but over the years, just like my old man, I slowly accumulated stuff – and needed a place to store it. Now, my two car garage is a one car garage and only now do I fully understand that my Dad had little choice.

The point of my story is to illustrate the problem that BizShake is trying to solve which is the lack of asset allocation optimization.

Think about all of the assets that everyone accumulates over time, and does not get used on a daily basis. Items such as power tools, kitchen appliances, beach and pool equipment, etc. Those items never reach their full potential because they are underutilized and overproduced.

Lets us a hammer as an example. The technology of a hammer hasn’t changed much over the centuries. Why do we need to produce more of them if society can find ways to share and transfer them to the next generation? The example may be an over simplification, but it illustrates where a resource/asset can be better optimized by the community.

Perhaps ownership is overrated and what we are actually looking for, and need, is access. Instead of buying, and owning outright, consumers are more and more opting for access to goods, paying for the experience of various forms of sharing. This market paradigm is known as “Cooperative Consumption.”

What BizShake is proposing is to leverage blockchain technology to build a platform where parties can have the opportunity to engage in trustworthy and reliable transactions with one another with the goal of sharing.

If successful, then BizShake will have helped the environment and build a stronger community. I believe those advantages are worth fighting for.

BUSINESS MODEL

BizShake will develop both a web and iOS and Andriod mobile platform. Within the platform they will focus on two different types of transactions within the sharing economy. They are:

• SmartRent: to allow users to lease assets to other users within a specific time period.

• SmartPawn: to allow users (pawners) to obtain a short-term loan, backed by an asset, from another user (lender).

BizShake will also develop a SmartDispute system to settle transactional disputes. The disputes will be reviewed by a Panel of Arbiters (presumably, token holders) that will receive a commission equal to 2% of the amount claimed by the user who escalated the dispute and equally shared between the all the Arbiters involved. BizShake will not charge a fee from this process.

REVENUE MODEL

BizShakes will take a fee as low as 5% of each transaction value (SmartRent & SmartPawn transactions).

More detailed information on fee levels will be communicated in the future.

ICO DISTRIBUTION DETAILS

ICO PROCEED ALLOCATION

ROADMAP

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’ve often thought that there should be community rental centers that act like libraries, but instead of checking in and out books, it would be a warehouse of items. Members of the community center could buy and loan out items for community use and fee.

This sort of resource optimization makes sense for certain resources. However, it probably doesn’t make sense for other types of resources, even if logically it should. Take my hammer example from the Introduction section. It probably makes sense to share one hammer between all of the neighbors within my community. Yet, at that price point it’s more convenient to either buy one myself. The same logic applies for an array of other items where it’s just nice to own certain things and not have the hassle of figuring out how to rent it.

BizShake says that trust is the major obstacle that is preventing the sharing economy from going vertical, but I believe it’s convenience. Similar to my hammer example, it’s just more convenient to own certain items than find someone that is renting one and coordinate pickup and return. Depending on the asset (and there are many), convenience trumps monetization and optimization. Once a person calculates if the action is worth it, then there is the trust issue.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t items where convenience isn’t the biggest factor in a person’ calculus to buy or rent. There are a lot of items that are costly and/or specialized where it makes sense to share. However, those super-costly items, such as a Bobcat, are affordable to businesses that have a model already for renting/sharing.

The BizShake sweet spot will be items in between the hammer and the Bobcat. It will be interesting to see if BizShake can make a case outside the sweet spot for non-business entities.

BizShake knows the blockchain will propel the sharing economy, but so do others. Competition will be fierce. BizShake will need to be perfect with their decisions and race to grab market share.

In sum, BizShake will operate in a hot market area. I think problem identification and solution is sound. They just need crypto to go mainstream and hang on and acquire customers. I look forward to tracking their progress and hope they succeed. As I said earlier, the sharing economy has environmental and community advantages that are worth cheering for.

REFERENCE LINKS

BizShake Website
ICO Details
Whitepaper
Telegram

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Traversing the Cryptosphere,
Kryptonaut (GeneralCryptoZod on Telegram)
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