I've been reading posts on Steemit for some time now and found some true gems among them. I rarely write myself, but when I do, it means that I have found something important to share. I'm not the one who writes just for the sake of writing.
This time I came across one exceptional find that I realized should not be overlooked by the community. I studied IT in e-commerce (MSc) at Greenwich University back in 2011, so the new ICO project called Cybermiles is directly related to my field of expertise.
Those of you who are in search of promising ICOs may have noticed that vast majority of ICOs reviewers mostly focus on the team - are they able to deliver? Have they properly done their homework? Do they have relevant experience, some basis for the proposal or, perhaps, working business already? I think these questions have to be answered YES by default before someone should talk about any ICO project at all. Another aspect of good ICO is a promising idea behind it.
So here I'm not going to talk about by default essentials too much - you will find relevant information in other reviews. Here I'll focus most on what matters to me - the know-how, the uniqueness and the power of a business idea. Simply speaking, do I see the potential and will I benefit from the project as an investor?
Regarding this project, you may call it e-commerce 2.0 if you like. Not sure, but one may even call it version 3.0 as it looks like a gigantic leap forward! Why? Please be patient, we’ll get to that.
Major concerns
Do we need blockchain tech in e-commerce at all while there are hundreds of large online businesses that are prospering in the area while utilizing traditional centralized platforms?
Blockchain technology is really good at storing and operating sensitive private data, but can it really offer a significant advantage to e-commerce businesses?
How can you possibly compete with huge successful players in multi-trillion dollar e-commerce market?
These were my top priority questions when I started reading Cybermiles papers. And the more I read, the less doubt I had. First, let's see what problem Cybermiles is trying to solve.
The biggest known drawback
We see that nowadays e-commerce economy sector prospers and grows fast. We may subdivide it into online shops run by companies and marketplaces where different kind of sellers and buyers meet. Here we will have a closer look at e-commerce marketplace industry that should benefit from the Cybermiles innovative approach. Here I will refer to eBay (currently one of the largest online marketplaces worldwide) as an example of the current е-commerce platform.
It is not clearly seen by everyone that existing centralized marketplaces like eBay are in fact ripping off its users. Yes, you may find a great deal on eBay and grab a real bargain. What you may don't know is that you still have to pay significantly more on top of the price that seller actually offers. The eBay acquired PayPal payment system many years ago and was able to set own rules and fees. If you have an experience on eBay then you know that in order to sell something there you will have to include around 13% fees in the price for eBay and PayPal fees together. And this number is indeed huge. Such revenue allowed eBay to spend millions on advertising and grow further, paying salaries for its many employees.
The law of the market is very simple. If you can make it cheaper, you win. If you can also make it better, you win even faster. If you can apply highly efficient innovative technology and ingenious concepts, you can take the market by a storm.
The idea
So what is the idea behind the Cybermiles? Essentially, Cybermiles is going to be well structured blockchain-based decentralized platform specifically designed for the usage by any third party businesses or individuals that are willing to utilize all benefits of e-commerce with some added advantages. The project aims not only to facilitate usual e-commerce processes like uninterrupted service with efficient dispute resolution mechanism but also to introduce many innovative features including identity management platform and loan marketplace, escrow services, counterfeit prevention practice, shared advertising resources and more.
The new approach will allow a significant decrease of associated costs that suffocate participants on traditional centralized platforms like eBay. On top of that, the new decentralized platform will introduce some advantageous features never seen before.
How to develop such a system successfully? This challenge is not simple from both technical and business points of view. First of all, there are many business processes to be maintained within the system. Secondly, conquering the market requires a good starting point and strategy.
The road to success
Thankfully, Cybermiles has a solid base to jumpstart. Current customer-to-customer e-commerce marketplace 5miles with more than 10 million registered users will be the first to migrate to the Cybermiles platform. The business knowledgebase of 5miles will be fully utilized during the Cybermiles development, so most of the business rules, procedures, contracts, and logic are available. If you are interested in the technical aspect of the project, then you should definitely look into technical whitepaper where the platform core is described. Here I’ll highlight the outcomes it should generate.
The existent centralized platforms like eBay are being maintained and managed by a group of people separated from end users. On the contrary, Cybermiles is aimed to create a self-sustained decentralized platform where community involvement is a key factor. For example, instead of having a team of employees dealing with dispute resolution cases, the Cybermiles platform incentivizes any user to do so. And if we scale it to other tasks within e-commerce platform, we may see that any kind of job may be done by a community member. Not only it would solve the current task, but create an additional stimulus for any user to participate in the system. If we add a fair governance structure to that, then such system would attract even more participants.
The secret weapon
Cybermiles is aimed to offer some interesting features to current e-commerce platforms, including user-generated groups, local ambassadors, “leads” bidding etc. You may learn more about them in the project whitepaper. No doubt, these features will contribute to wider adoption. But there is something special that I want to emphasize on.
Cybermiles is going to implement decentralized identity management platform that will be utilized for credit history records for each user. Not only it would create a very safe environment to store such a sensible data, but when evolved, such system will allow peer-to-peer loan marketplace.
When developed further, it may come to the point where any seller will be able to make credit sales to trustworthy buyers with suitable credit history. It means that goods will be given to a customer on credit with a prearranged payment schedule. We may only guess how exactly “Buy now and pay later” option would boost sales, but the potential is huge - there are no third parties like banks to feed. Such a functionality within the Cybermiles platform may become the golden key to conquer multi-trillion dollar e-commerce market.
Conclusion
It will take some time for Cybermiles to reach its goals and create an innovative platform specifically designed for e-commerce use worldwide. They have a great idea and all the resources needed including wise executive board, strong team and the great interest of investors (look at existing investors and how successful pre-ICO was). Having 5miles as lucrative traditional e-commerce platform to start with is extremely beneficial to the project.
While it is still a good time for traditional e-commerce platforms to thrive, most of them will face a particularly strong competition from the Cybermiles platform in upcoming years. In order to become an investor or a future platform user, please have a deeper look at Cybermiles.