The Market at Present
With booming online marketplaces, buying and selling have indeed become very easy nowadays. But it is also a world fraught with fake reviews that dupe customers into buying poor quality products from less credible sellers. It is also a place that takes high transaction fee to maintain their centralized way of doing things, starting from payments to customer feedback.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a marketplace where buyers and sellers can interact with each other, without the need for a centralized authority to manage their transactions, while also creating more credibility, for less or no transaction fee? Well, Ink Protocol project is set to do that exactly.
What is Ink Protocol?
Ink Protocol, a decentralized reputation and payment system, is developed by Listia, a P2P marketplace for buying and selling used goods online. Launched in 2009, Listia now has over 10 million registered users who have exchanged 100 million items. The company has raised $11 Million in venture capital from prominent investors.
With the blockchain technology and cryptocurrency gaining prominence, Listia found the ideal opportunity to integrate the technology to solve marketplace issues and make it decentralized. They raised money for the project through Ink Protocol Token(XNK) sale, which ended this February, meeting their hard cap target of $15 million. Now they are all set to release their mobile app, with which users can use the tokens to trade across different online marketplaces.
How will it work?
Ink Protocol is based on the Ethereum Network. It will be integrated with Listia initially, and later with other marketplaces using their Ink Pay mobile app. Using the XNK, an ERC20 compatible token, users can safely send and receive payments in P2P marketplaces while earning a public reputation for every completed transaction.
For sellers, transactions made with XNK token will help build their public reputation (with unique Ethereum address) allowing them to quickly start selling on the new marketplaces without needing to rebuild reputation all over. Buyers can view seller's reputation across multiple marketplaces and transact risk-free using either automated or human-mediated escrow contract with optional third-party mediation.
What their Future holds?
- Initial integration with Listia:
The project already has a giant platform called Listia to integrate with. All of its 10 million registered users will give the project the necessary adaptability and momentum early on. Listia already uses their non-fiat payment using their digital currency called Listia Credits, for transactions.
It is not blockchain based, though. So these credits will now be converted to XNK tokens and users can start transacting immediately.
- Scalability:
Having had such an initial advantage, integration with other marketplaces needs to be considered sooner. They may not be willing to readily accept this change that can disrupt their way of doing things. They may even come up with their coin and protocol. So, Ink Protocol should focus on making as many partnerships as they can to sustain in the long run and achieve their goal of transforming the marketplace for the better.
Their recent collaboration with men's accessories e-commerce site, Everyday Carry is a positive step in that direction. Ink Protocol also announced their partnership with Kleros for dispute resolution, which will help build their credibility.
Conclusion
With all this as a beginning, Ink Protocol hopes that in future, hundreds of decentralized marketplaces and partnerships built on top of Ink Protocol will thrive and become the standard way for people to transact with each other online and in-person.
Will they become powerful enough to disrupt the market and achieve their goals? Well, we have to wait and see how well they are received and integrated with many other mainstream marketplaces.