The sharing economy has experienced tremendous growth over the past decade which demonstrates its potential for international scalability. The sharing economy basically consists of various activities such as acquiring, providing or sharing goods and services that is often facilitated by an online platform. Sharing economy is a term that describes economic activities involving online transactions. It can also be described as peer-to-peer community platform for sharing of goods and services. Over recent years, the advancements in technology has resulted in lower transaction costs and more convenient avenues for consumers and suppliers to connect in order to share product and services.
Problems Associated With Sharing Economy
Sharing economy has a lot of potentials for unlocking the market for peer-to-peer sharing of goods and services but this model is still fraught with many problems. Sharing economy has always depended on centralized platforms to help carry out the pee-to-peer sharing of goods and services which has created a lot of problems. Again, sharing has only been between friends, family, and trusted individuals but this market is growing in leaps and bounds to accommodate other players in the sharing ecosystem. The introduction of these other players and the continued growth of this economy has created problems of trust, increase in transaction cost etc. With that in mind, it is expedient to reflect on the ever-increasing challenges that face the sharing economy. These problems are highlighted below:
- Excessive transaction cost
- The problem of trust
- Data leakage and abuse
Excessive Transaction Cost
One of the major problems of the traditional centralized sharing platforms is excessive transaction costs. What these platforms are after is to make profits at the expense of the users of their platforms. A perfect example is the case Uber. Many times, you’ll take Uber drive and the amount they will charge will not correspond to the kilometers traveled. Many other centralized sharing platforms do this as well just to maximize their profit while limiting the supply of their sharing services. This is made possible in most cases because these big centralized platforms have been able to gain a considerable amount of amount of market share which allows them to dispute user’s acceptance of price and service quality.
The Problem of Trust
Trust is the biggest issue when it comes to sharing economy, as human beings are unpredictable variables in many of these transactions. For a transaction to be carried out there must be mutual trust between the consumer and the supplier. Current sharing platforms have done little or nothing in solving the problem of trust between the actors in the sharing economy. What these centralized sharing platforms do is to take the risk and vouch for both parties to fulfil their end of the deal but there has been cases where this has turned out to be disasters in the past.
Data Leakage and Abuse
Furthermore, data leakage and abuses has also plagued the sharing economy. Users, most times are required to provide their identity information for the purpose of registration. This information is stored on centralized data base which is prone to hacks and breaches by hackers thereby exposing this vital information to the risk of theft and leakage. There have also been cases where this data has been abused by these centralized platforms for the purpose of research and other purposes. The case 2016 Uber Data Breach comes to mind where hackers gained access to more than 600,000 US diver’s private information like name, phone numbers, email addresses, license numbers etc.
It is quite clear from the above that the ever increasing sharing ecosystem that we are in today is in dire need of an economical, secured and decentralized sharing ecosystem that will proffer solutions to all the above problems that the sharing economy is currently facing.
Introducing UCHAIN – The Next Generation Sharing Ecosystem on The Blockchain
UChain is a next generation sharing platform built on the blockchain. This decentralized sharing platform brings buyers and suppliers together through an autonomous sharing platform thereby eliminating the need for a third party. The UChain platform will also facilitate the development of decentralized apps or Dapps. UChain utilizes a sharing based economy and is widely considered by many as the first public infrastructure blockchain. UChain’s primary goal is to build a decentralized sharing network that proffer solutions to the current problems of excessive transaction cost, trust problem and data abuse. These awesome advantages are what make UChain one of the best decentralized autonomous sharing networks on the market. The main aim of creating a decentralized ecosystem in which both the supplier and the users are equally powerful which remove any room for exploitation of one party by the other. Let’s look at the advantages that the UChain platform offers below:
Low Transaction Cost
UChain provides a peer-to-peer decentralized sharing network that connects suppliers and users of services together without the need for a third party. Transactions are settled between the parties involved. This automatically removes the transaction cost charged by centralized third parties. This process has been estimated to reduce transaction cost by nearly 20%.
Elimination of Risk
Another major breakthrough that UChain has been able to make in the sharing ecosystem is solving the concerns about trust from both parties in a sharing network. The whole transaction on the UChain platform will be handled by smart contracts and cross-chain hosting technology to ensure the authenticity and compliance with the terms of agreement. The user of a service will basically be asked to freeze a certain amount of tokens as a deposit. This deposit will then be released to the supplier of service upon the completion of the transaction. The use of UCN token on the platform allows for real-time settlement without any delay thereby eliminating the risk involved in the traditional sharing ecosystem.
Data Security
UChain is a blockchain-based sharing network which means all transactions on the UChain platform are recorded and stored on the blockchain. These transaction are fool-proof and highly secured. User’s information stored on this platform is also very secured as it is only accessible to the owner of the data. Instead of storing this vital information on centralized data base which are prone to attacks by hackers, transactions and user vital information are stored on a distributed storage scheme with a private key which means only the owner has access to this data. The information is kept away from the prying eyes of hackers.
The Uchain Token
The UChain’s UCN token will be used as the medium of exchange on the UChain ecosystem. This will help in facilitating the transactions on this network thereby bringing about the mmuch-neededtrust in the sharing ecosystem.
UChain UCN will also be used as a reward token for distinguished contributors, individuals or organizations through a PoA (Proof of Activity) algorithm.
Token Information:
Name: Uchain
Type: ERC-20
Ticker: UCN
Price: 1 ETH = 5,000 UCN
Hard cap: 35,000 ETH
Token Allocation:
• Ecosystem - 40%
• Token Sale - 35%
• Team - 15%
• Company Reserve - 10%
Use of Funds Raised During ICO:
Research and Development - 35%
Global Operations and Expansion - 30%
Marketing and Growth - 30%
Advisory - 5%
The Uchain team
Advisors
Investors and Partners
UChain will join forces with companies like U-Bicycle, the market leader and world’s biggest company specializing in shared travel. It will also be the parent company to many eastern companies like U-Car, U-Park, Grab-cycle, X-Bike, etc. Every technology that has been implemented by UChain will also be applied to all the U bicycle entities under it immediately.
Roadmap
I have provided links to the website and whitepaper of Uchain below
• Website: https://uchain.world/
• https://uchain.world/css/img/pdf/uchain-whitepaper-dbe5656d6c.pdf
The following provides the link to their social media sites:
• Twitter：https://twitter.com/UChainEcosystem
• Medium: https://medium.com/@uchain
• Reddit：https://www.reddit.com/r/UChain/
• Telegram group: https://t.me/UchainEcosystem
Authours Profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2077261