Hi Steemit,

I had a look at this ICO that is currently running. it's Winding Tree ICO. They have the really good product and amazing partners!

What is Winding Tree?

Winding Tree is creating a decentralized, wholesale-level inventory distribution platform for the travel industry where hotel rooms, flights, tours, and related services can be advertised, queried, and purchased. Winding Tree’s low-fee, open-source structure will allow it to challenge existing monopolies within the travel industry not by mounting a new online travel agency (OTA) to compete directly with established names such as Orbitz or Expedia, but by creating a blockchain-based platform operating at the protocol level. Developers can build marketplace interfaces on top of this protocol that new or existing businesses can utilize to sell travel inventory. This approach holds the potential of fundamentally altering the dynamics of the travel industry should adoption become widespread over time.

How does Winding Tree work?

Winding Tree’s system will work by allowing travel industry vendors such as hotels or airlines to post their inventory onto the network, with hashed records stored on the blockchain, from where it can be accessed by any reseller who is connected to the system. The listing of inventory will require no platform fees, merely a payment to cover network gas costs. Resellers, such as travel agents or online platforms, can then search the network for free. Upon booking a room or seat from inventory on the platform the booking agent would pay the required room charge, plus a further amount (to be determined, but likely as low as 0.02 LIF–or approximately $.25 if the ICO reaches $10 million and ETH is $800), which would also pass to the miner confirming the transaction. Winding Tree would take no platform fee or commission on transactions within the platform, a tectonic shift from existing arrangements.

What is their Business Model?

Winding Tree intends to function as a true open-source protocol. The platform will be free to use, and will be sustained by proceeds of the token sale, through two separate mechanisms. Proceeds above $10 million from the ICO will be available to sustain the foundation, with those funds to be released to the foundation on a monthly basis over a 12 or 24 month period, depending upon the amount. A further 5% of the total token supply will be allocated to the Winding Tree Foundation, to be used in 2 – 4 years, once ICO funds above $10 million that are routed into the Market Validation Mechanism (see below) are exhausted. Winding Tree has also reserved the right to conduct a second token sale in the future, at a point four years after any foundation revenue stream from the token sale (see below) will have been exhausted. These funds, presumably, will be dedicated to the foundation.

The LIF Token

Winding Tree’s operations are animated by the ERC-20 compatible LIF token. Airlines, property managers or other vendors sending inventory to the platform will be required to hold a balance of LIF tokens, with which network gas fees will be paid at the moment inventory is listed on the network. Likewise, after searching inventory at no charge, purchasers of the product will pay to complete the transaction by paying for the reserved service as well as network gas fees. Winding Tree will not retain any portion of these fees, or another commision, with all payments passing directly to the Ethereum miners. This should make Winding Tree transactions more attractive than normal Ethereum transactions to miners.

Competition and Peers

While there are a small number of blockchain-based efforts to enter the travel distribution space that have appeared, none would appear to offer the prospects of meaningfully impacting the entire travel distribution industry in the way Winding Tree is intending. Lockchain, for instance, is a decentralized marketplace where hotels and property owners can advertise and rent property. While incorporating the blockchain, Lockchain effectively functions as existing OTAs do, with the business model built around charging a monthly fee to list on their platform. Travelcoin, a decentralized ticket booking system for flights, hotels, cruises, sports and events, claims to have completed two token sales, in August and December 2017, without having reported raise amounts in either case. Travelcoin does not have a token listed as trading on coinmarketcap.com and the status of the project is not entirely clear. Webjet, based in Australia, is focused on hotel bookings in Australia and New Zealand. In November 2016 Webjet and Microsoft announced a partnership for a blockchain-based solution for travel distribution, but little news appears to have emerged subsequently. Concierge is another potential competitor as decentralized travel booking marketplace built on NEO blockchain, with an ICO planned to being in mid-February.

Team

Winding Tree emerged from experience in a previous startup launched by CEO Maksim Izmaylov and CTO Jakup Vysoky called Roomstorm, which provided last minute accommodations to travelers faced with emergency situations such as overbooked or cancelled flights. They incubated Roomstorm at YCombinator in 2014, which led to a realization that the travel community and conferences over the past decade were dominated by the product launch narratives of market leading companies, while communities for developers intent on finding more efficient ways to build underlying systems were virtually nonexistent. A testament to the founding team’s history of grassroots community involvement and mission to transform the travel industry from monopoly into meritocracy is Maksim Izmaylov’s founding of Travel Tech Con in 2016, a not-for-profit conference held annually and which also hosts monthly meetups, aimed at supporting technologists innovating within the travel industry.