This article is a conversation string I had with one of syscoins developers (keyare) on their Slack channel today.
For months, I had not been clear on the “true value” of what syscoin has to offer to the average consumer or how the average consumer would adopt to the technology. If there is no adoption, there is no use of the coin (or crypto), so I could not see too much growth or user adoption. Finally I was able to reach one of the developers on the syscoin Facebook group and he redirected me to speak with him on their Slack channel where one of the developers keyare was able to give me alot more specifics on how syscoin plans to create mass user adoption.
Disclaimer:
- I do own some syscoin
- I am not part of the development team
---> BEGINNING OF THE CONVERSATION STRING ON SYSCOIN SLACK CHANNEL BETWEEN KEYARE AND MYSELF <---
vaughnpierre:
How are syscoin tokens being used now?
keyare:
Hello Vaughn, Syscoin can be used to send and receive funds like Bitcoin, you can create your own identity with an Alias, you can make offers, buy and sell anything directly on the blockchain, you can send/receive and even sell data certificates and you can send and receive fully encrypted messages; there are also many things that the combination of all these unique features can do which are being explored or are untapped as of yet. Join our community by entering your email address at http://join.syscoin.org
vaughnpierre:
Thank you for the reply. Can you give me examples (types of companies and vendors) who are using syscoin on a daily/weekly basis, so i can understand better market adoption?
keyare:
Even if we had launched Blockmarket (which we haven't yet) we would not be able to give those numbers. The entire concept behind a decentralized marketplace is that you are buying and selling 1:1 with no one tracking your data, no middlemen taking a portion of the sale, no one telling you what you can and can't do. We believe you should be able to completely control your own data and your own money. This is what makes the blockchain unique to e-commerce and blockmarket possible. You can try the beta here: https://medium.com/@BlockchainFoundry/announcing-blockmarket-desktop-beta-4-4f8132a0f798
vaughnpierre:
I understand the 1:1 no middle-man theory but eBay and Amazon were able to centralize marketplaces for people, although the model is abused because of the middle man. What is syscoins direction for creating user adoption (similar to eBay/Amazon)? What is the value proposition, where the average consumer will understand the value right away and jump on board?
keyare:
Once Blockmarket Web is live, the user experience will be more similar to a regular e-commerce experience, like etsy or eBay, but of course they have had 20 years to create the behemoth marketshare and the user-experience they currently have. We are just at the very beginning of this new technology
A marketplace on the blockchain has advantages to centralized e-commerce offerings in a number of ways:
• No middlemen - no one takes a share of your sale. Eliminating credit card fees, paypal fees etc. When 3% of your gross sales go to a middleman, this can be an incentive to switch to a decentralized model.
• No central point of failure. Because nodes are redundant and scattered all over the world, there is no datacenter to fail with a ddos attack or other event.
• No hosting fees. Again, because this is on the blockchain, there are no hosting fees to host your store. This can incentivize merchants to switch to a decentralized model if hosting or hosting fees are an issue. This is a very big issue in some areas in the world.
• No political interference. If you live in a country where certain books are illegal, you cannot buy or sell those books on eBay or Amazon or whatever platform is used in that country. A decentralized model does not allow censoring. Nobody can remove or censor your buying and selling on the blockchain. This can create issues with legal and moral implications. We can choose to hide sensitive items, or display them, but we cannot remove them. Anyone can create their own interface, and just like the internet, there will be pockets of insanity.
By making the UI simpler, intuitive and free to use, we think these things will drive adoption. At the moment we cannot market to merchants as the barriers to entry and technological skills required to use the marketplace prohibit mass-adoption.
Blockmarket WEB will be a simple website. You will be able to list your items for sale for free, and buy items with no middlemen and near zero fees.
Once the web interface is available, our target market increases beyond the current 70,000 people capable of installing a crypto-wallet, to 5 BiLLION people capable of using a website.
• No one can take off with your money either. If Paypal decides you shouldn't have sold something, they can take your money back or shut down your account. Look at Alphabay - someone walks off with a couple million in user assets. That's not even possible with the Blockmarket.
vaughnpierre:
Thank you for the points keyare: I understand the technological limitations now, but assuming they are in place for the masses to adopt to a simple website for eBay/Amazon style listing, does syscoin have a Marketing/Advertising Plan to create consumer awareness?
keyare:
We will not begin marketing to any large userbase until we are satisfied that it is grandma-friendly.
We have three marketing paths once BM WEB is available.
• Traditional advertising: socmed/google ads/articles, banner ads etc.
• Value-added campaign where we offer something COMPLETELY new (sorry i cannot give you the details.)
• Forced-viral: where creating a listing automatically tweets and other tactics I cannot discuss ATM
And i'm sorry i cannot discuss some of the marketing tactics because they would give away some functionality we are developing.
• Oh i forgot import filters and plugins. We have to complete BM WEB before these begin development. Import filters will allow you to import all of your listings from sites like Ebay to the blockmarket, and plugins will enable platforms like shopify and prestashop to use syscoin.
BLOCKMARKET is only the tip of the iceberg though. In creating the backend for Blockmarket, we have developed a set of hardened smart contracts that can be used in hundreds of different blockchain use-cases. With the Syscoin API we can make a blockchain application that serves legal documents, medical data, payroll, and many more concepts. We started Blockchain Foundry to begin development on some of these use-cases for outside companies. We are a blockchain development company. And most of these contracts will also add value to the Syscoin token by using the Syscoin Blockchain.
We're not a simple project. We're not going to be an overnight success. We are dedicated to long term development and growth. For many years. We believe in keeping our users investments safe through security audits and avoiding pump tactics. We're one of those projects you can put some money on and forget, because you know we are working tirelessly to build a company that will come out of this tech bubble on the other end as one of the few that survive.
---> END OF THE CONVERSATION STRING ON SYSCOIN SLACK CHANNEL BETWEEN KEYARE AND MYSELF <---
Here’s my summary points of what I currently think of syscoin and where I see it could go:
So it looks like syscoin does have a good direction to build serious infrastructure for mass adoption.
They are too early in the game to release blockmarket (eBay/Amazon style technology) for the average user since they want to make it "grandma-friendly" and avoid bad experiences, similar to what happened with openbazzar (where many users did not return after bad experience).
They seem to have a good marketing/advertising direction creating user awareness for the average consumer to use the decentralized blockmarket (although I would like more details).
Considering the detailed answered to my questions, I do see syscoin having an understanding how why consumers would switch from a modern centralized model (eBay/Amazon) and switch to the decentralized no-fee model syscoin has to offer on the blockmarket.
Syscoin currently is unique as a product. I do not see much competition in the Blockmarket (eBay/Amazon) style products they are offering. Other cryptos, such as privacy coins (Monero, Pivx, Zcash) have many competitors as well as transactional coins such as Bitcoin, Dash, and Ethereum.
Given the current stage of the roadmap, and where syscoin stands in the pre-lease of their blockmarket product to a much larger audience, I see the use of the “syscoin coin” adopting and gaining a much larger market share by end of 2017 and having much more usage by 2018.
Given the above points, I do see syscoin as a “True Value” cryptocurrency which will emerge as one of the top 5 performing cryptos by end of 2017 and 2018.