Amazon started out selling books on the internet because quality of books remain largely the same, other than the condition of the books. The success of its books sale through the internet allowed Amazon to conquer other markets, eventually being the one stop shop it now is online that allows you to buy just about anything that could be bought. Consumer products dealing with physical goods are usually first disrupted due to the consistency of the product, not so much for services. This all now is about to change.
Disrupting Travel Accommodation with the Internet 1.0
With the advent of sites like Airbnb, travellers can bypass the usual stalwarts of travel industry: hotels. The sharing economy has unlocked value for home-owners through renting out their surplus space for profits. Airbnb is not perfect though. There exists among other problems, a credit risk between the renter and the rentee, fake reviews being prevalent to boost the score of a location, and rent-seeking administrators slotting themselves between customer and owner to make easy money.
Huobi Autonomous Digital Asset Exchange (HADAX) Hivemind Discovers Tripio (TRIO); Listing on HADAX
Tripio (TRIO) was first brought to my attention when HADAX voting by Huobi Global resulted in Tripio scoring a sick 500% more than required for votes. This does not happen often, as the HADAX voting system is a put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is system and so there must be immense backing in this company's direction and growth potential. This also means that they will be listed by HADAX, a secondary exchange by Huobi Global.
Tripio (TRIO) is a Blockchain-based marketplace catered for travel industry which connects customers and service providers globally. What brings value to both parties is the transparent, immutable ecosystem it is based on. The goal is to produce smart contracts for service providers to automate the terms and conditions setting and execution of each contract. The idea is that the contract can be enforceable and monitored by oracles and will be arbitrated through self-governing mechanisms.
The ecosystem of Tripio will include a community of decentralized applications (Dapps) built on the Tripio protocol. 4 mainstays of the ecosystem has been developed: identity registration, payments, reputation and dispute resolution. Taken together with the properties of Blockchain, this is a promising ecosystem. In fact, there is already a proven demand for Tripio's services. Average daily bookings is about 300 and is set to grow further looking at past trends. It seems Blockchain does have a contender for the Airbnb model.
Brokering a Transparent Platform with Humans and AI
Tripio (TRIO) brokers different credit systems that do not speak to each other. The example in their whitepaper is the sharing of credit information between Ctrip, Agoda and Xiaozhu Rental (Chinese company). Having a shared system of credit ranking creates a safer travel service ecosystem, where service providers can err on the side of caution trusting that the information they have is based on multiple platforms.
AI is touted to be used to sift out counterfeit comments, although a closer read of the white paper suggests that it may not be AI but more of machine learning data analyses. The example in the white paper is to use a context classification model called Bag of Words (BOW). This does not seem to be in the domain of Artificial Intelligence but more of machine learning classification categorization. The idea of an anti-cheating model is a good one to implement though.
It seems that the platform will be utilizing human arbitration too. It is very difficult for machines to arbitrate at this moment, as the context of differing situations often ends up in a he-said-she-said situation and dispute resolution usually requires the eye and mind of a human. In Tripio's case, it seems that the coordinator and arbitrator may be human but the entire process of filing and claiming for the dispute is automated by machines.
Big Name Backers Support the Domination of Tripio
The tech business now is a winner-takes-all landscape. Blockchain is no different. What makes Tripio (TRIO) stand out is the sheer bigwigs in the VC landscape to have backed them. Tripio has the following backers: OK Blockchain Capital, Block VC, INBlockchain, Node Capital and even competing coin TRON by Justin Sun. That is a lot of money and connections available to Tripio.
The author's opinion is that there are sizable pros in this coin. The clear business model and understandable/relatable to the retail investor, the fact that they have a running business and reservations being made, outsize reach in capital raising and quite a simple business model and revenue stream makes this a good bet. The cons is that this coin has yet to break the Top 1000 coins and is extremely volatile in price. I would wait a little before investing in it, although it definitely warrants a place in the watchlist.