This article is inspired by our discussion with Zoltan Szalas from Starta accelerator on Emerge conference in Minsk. He asked the question from the header: what if offchain sharing services go blockchain one day? Will WONO survive the competition? I’ve got no doubt that yes, we will. And there are two main reasons to be so confident.
First, Airbnb would very unlikely go blockchain. That means that they need to disrupt their own centralized system and build a completely new infrastructure. I’ve worked in several BBCs — Big Boring Corporations and can tell you for sure: when you’ve got millions of transactions a month you can’t just stop and change everything. That’s mean killing your existing business for something unclear. Changing is extremely difficult for big corporations.
But OK, I believe that in some circumstances they can do it. At least, they can just go and buy one of home sharing crypto startups. Will WONO be in danger in that case? No.
Because there’s a second reason. If Airbnb will own a crypto sharing service, then it would be just another single market segment blockchain service, nothing similar to WONO’s business model.
I’d like to remind that we don’t build Airbnb on blockchain. We build an environment where you can share what you have and get what you want. Where you can earn in any way you like (freelancing or renting out your car, flat, bike, etc) and spend your tokens on someone else’s asset rentals or services. Without taxation and currency exchange loss.
There is, actually, a threat for WONO. If Airbnb, Turo and Upwork would meet each other and decide to go blockchain together, then we’ll have a very dangerous competitor. Do you believe in such a scenario? Me not.
Andrey Chepelev, COO at WONO