Today's sharing economy industry is a swiftly growing set of platforms that allow people to gain temporary access to varied services and assets. An estimated $23B in venture capital funding has poured into the market over the past 7 years. Due to the privacy of the most platform providers, it is difficult to evaluate the total size of the sharing economy. For example, this Trefis Valuation Model estimates the fair value for Airbnb (one of the largest companies in the sharing economy) to be $38B in 2018.
At the same time, all of the top sharing economy companies are still in generation 1.0, where users are forced to use a third-party platform to provide their idle resources for other people in exchange for money. There are a number of problems that need to be addressed:
- Excessive transaction costs, which are common practice among the famous companies. Centralized platforms tend to charge a high commission for their service.
- The problem of trust. The current technology does not solve the problem of trust through technical means. Sometimes a platform collects deposits or collateral from both sides to reduce financial risk, which actually increased the barriers and cost to the sharing economy.
- Data leakage and abuse. Most companies store users' data in centralized database. This makes it vulnerable to hacker attacks that can lead to the loss and leakage of confidential data.
UChain’s Solution
UChain will establish a blockchain network, specifically designed for the global sharing economy, to provide decentralized, secure and fully autonomous peer-to-peer ecosystem for everyone. Blockchain technology has a number of advantages that can solve the previously mentioned problems.
Low Transaction Costs
Peer-to-peer transactions between users and service providers don't include intermediaries, which will reduce the fee nearly by 20%. UChain's token (UCN) will be used as a transaction certificate when the user subscribes or purchases a service, such as renting a car or booking a room. Smart contracts and cross-chain hosting technology will provide authenticity, legality and compliance during the whole transaction process.
User Credit Passport
A secure distributed ledger, which the team calls a "chain of trust", will contain all transaction activity. UChain will set a credit passport mechanism open to all sharing service providers. The user's credit passport is an identity authentication which will allow to make transactions directly without having to make a deposit. This makes the process easier for all participants.
Security of Users’ Data
UChain will store and extract user and service provider’s data through a distributed storage scheme with a private key. This private key is the only way to revise stored information, which prevents any interference from third parties. Data will be encrypted, split and allocated on different nodes. This ensures that even if one node is compromised, it does not disclose full information.
Sharing Economy 2.0
The main advantage of the new Sharing Economy Model is the absence of intermediaries and commissions. Users are connected peer-to-peer with all transactions being settled in the local token. Furthermore, Uchain's blockchain architecture will provide users and enterprises the opportunity to distribute their own tokens. UCN token will be the main currency in the UChain ecosystem and can also be applied as the basic unit in exchange for other tokens, issued within the ecosystem.
U-Bicycle DApp
UChain's core management already has a huge experience in the sharing economy field. They have a solid background, creating U-Bicycle - a bicycle sharing service that includes 5 countries (including China, Canada, America, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Europe), 300+ employees and 30 million users. The company's goal is improving city living through eco-friendly transportation options that are convenient and affordable.
U-Bicycle plans to become a part of the UChain ecosystem, thereby become the first sharing service platform based on the blockchain technology. With the platform, users will have the opportunity to rent a bike or give for use their bicycles in exchange for rewards.
UCN Token
UCN is the base currency within the UChain ecosystem. Thereby, UCN applied in all DApps built on top of UChain as payment for all kind of transactions. UChain provides a rewards system for community contributors such as third-party developers and community operators. Users who choose to contribute their data to ecosystem development will also be rewarded with UCN tokens.
Token Sale Details
- Token Name: UCN
- Total supply: to be determined at the conclusion of the ICO
- Hard Cap: 35,000 ETH
- The Private Sale: 33,000 ETH with a 50% bonus
- The Public Presale: 2,000 ETH with a 15% bonus
With the solid experience in the sharing economy industry and with the support of selected investors and strategic partners, UChain will create the next generation distributed smart network that will solve today's market problems.
I only scratched the surface without going into technical details. If you are interested in this project and you need more information, please use the links below:
Website: https://uchain.world/
Whitepaper: https://uchain.world/css/img/pdf/uchain-whitepaper-dbe5656d6c.pdf
Telegram: https://t.me/UchainEcosystem
Twitter: https://twitter.com/UChainEcosystem
Medium Blog: https://medium.com/@uchain