Online reviews play a prominent part in our day to day decision-making processes. Whether we are looking for hotels or restaurants to visit or are trying to decide what car to buy or what movie to go to, we tend to check what other users said about it online. Or we don't – in no small part because the system as it exists now is inadequate to its task. The review industry is fragmented, inefficient and unreliable, which is generally a nuisance for regular users but a bigger problems for companies that incorporate ratings directly into their procedures (for instance, to determine pay) or simply want feedback on their products. Specific problems include a lack of incentives for reviewers, poor quality control and the absence of standard, appropriate criteria in many fields.
https://lina.review/
Smart Links Swiss (SLS), a blockchain provider company, wants to employ both blockchain technology and community mechanisms to develop a new platform for reviews. Lina.review will be the name of both the platform and its starting universal review channel. Additionally, any number of third parties will be able to use this platform to host their own review channels, fully customised to meet their own needs.
How will the Lina.review platform operate?
The platform will be built on a hybrid blockchain, connecting a public Ethereum mainchain with a high performance sidechain used for all transactions. Users will access Lina.review through its website or an app, connecting their profiles with wallet addresses to be able to participate in the platform's LINA token economy. Interested businesses can register on the channel as merchants to receive the right to run review or advertising campaigns. Ads or products that need reviews could be submitted for the platform with an attached amount of LINA and certain parameters such as time and the required number of reviews. All offered campaigns will be reviewed by channel staff; if rejected, the attached tokens will be returned; otherwise, the campaigns will go ahead, with products becoming available for user review and ads appearing on the platform. Ad clicks or review submissions will be recorded on the sidechain. The system will check each campaign from time to time. Once a campaign has been fully executed, the LINA attached to it will be distributed in accordance with channel rules by a smart contract. If it is only partially executed by the time it expires, payments will still be made, but leftover funds will return to the merchant.
Different channels will be able to set their own rules, including those concerning cashflow and subjects for reviews. For instance, the main Lina.review channel will cover all possible topics, but it will be possible to set up more narrowly focused groups, as well as specify various required review criteria. The main channel will also require merchant registration fees, and distribute profits from campaigns and advertising between LINA holders and Helpers – expert-level users. To become a Helper, one would have to either meet a certain threshold of having written popular (upvoted) reviews as a common user or submit an application with whatever credentials one sees fit to be approved by the channel's Helper Board. Helper reviews will be presented separately from others on a channel, and Helpers will also be required to help confirm user reviews. Other channels could also offer a share of their profits to regular users or do away with the Helper system entirely. While setting up a channel of your own with the help of the Lina SDK will not require payments, Lina.review will collect 10% of its revenues.
What advantages does Lina.review have to offer?
Lina.review's design could accommodate a wide range of possible uses. In addition to other universal review channels, it could be used to set up a review page for some specific type of products or services, a company's exclusive review page for its products or even a personal film review blog. Blockchain technology will be used to both enable a reliable incentive system and safeguard it against some forms of foul play that are widely alleged to happen within the review industry by providing immutability and transparency. The platform is designed with scalability in mind from the start: Its hybrid architecture should allow it to support a large community, while the threshold for becoming a Helper is set to rise depending on the size of the userbase, making the status more exclusive and therefore, in theory, more valuable.
The product has attracted some press attention due to the involvement of experienced and prominent New Zealand-based entrepreneurs, such as Mitchell Pham and Leigh Flounders. They have been active in cultivating support within Southeast Asia's emerging cryptocurrency ecosystem. Lina.review's MVP is already finished and has been made available on its website and on alternative app marketplaces.
https://lina.review/
Token sale details
The LINA ICO was to run from January 15 to March 30, 2018, though details on its outcome are not available. Further token releases will occur over ten years.
A people-powered review network
While Lina.review leans on its blockchain to set up incentives and ensure transparency, mitigating some of the issues in the review industry, its success still depends primarily on the human factor. This dependency manifests in different ways. Firstly, the participants will need to trust in the competence and objectivity of its staff. Secondly, it will need to attract businesses to the platform, as without them there will be nothing to review and no rewards to distribute. Thirdly, it will, of course, depend on its userbase (including Helpers) to operate as a functional community. A lot will depend on the staff's and the community's ability to police the network.
Assuming it is sufficiently successful in all three regards, Lina.review's toolset would indeed be very helpful for reviewers, which in turn should be of great assistance to the business community as a whole (including practically any consumer-oriented industry) and to everyday users. It would still be vulnerable to companies gaming the system, though perhaps the incentive system will make the current method of paid reviews somewhat redundant. The rather haphazard level of activity shown by company after its ICO is troubling, especially from the standpoint of attracting key early support. But it may be able to overcome this hurdle and create a valuable new online service.
Links:
Website: https://lina.review/
WhitePaper: https://lina.review/lina_whitepaper.pdf
Telegram: https://t.me/linareviewintl
Facebook: https://ru-ru.facebook.com/LinaNework/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lina_network
Medium: https://medium.com/lina-review
ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2767700.0
Author: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=980049
Disclaimer
This review by Bonanza Kreep is all opinion and analysis, not investment advice.