In this article I’m going to explain what is Indorse and how it works.
A decentralized professional network sounds like a good idea and if properly implemented, definitely has potential to be adopted worldwide. Indorse, as far as I know, is the first blockchain-based professional network and it currently runs an ICO to collect funds for further development. On Indorse, you will present your skills and qualifications, let others to check them and get rewards in form of Indorse tokens if the information you provided is true. You can also be the one who checks others’ information and earn money for correct endorsements.
Indorse platform aims to focus on: representation of skills ; crowd-based verification ; ownership of your own data and reward system for contributors of the content.
Representation of skills
With information age, qualifications no longer represent acquired knowledge, rather they are representations of accumulated skills. More people than ever before can acquire various skills that are now in demand. And more than ever before, we need social networks for showing what you are good at. LinkedIn, for example, is oriented on formal qualifications and building professional relationships, freelancing websites focus on a wider range of skills and reputation is built on feedback of customers. Indorse is like a mix of these services. According to the company’s vision, they don’t plan to restrict the range of presentable skills, but at first stages of the network operation , they may limit the list. This is needed for stable development, because many skills (such as preparing a delicious salad) are hard to verify and the platform has to provide proper tools for this process.
Verification ( or endorsement) of others’ claims is the main feature of the platform. Each member can have 2 roles – Claimant and moderator. As a claimant, you make a claim on your professional or personal skill. With every claim made, you have to attach at least 1 proof of information. Moderators review the claims and either indorse or flag it. The platform has an Indrose Score system which reflects your reputation. IT uses SCR token and works like proof-of stake: every time you make a review or a claim, you have to stake your reputation score. Endorsing the right claims and flagging off wrong ones will earn you SCR token, while doing the opposite results in loss of your stake. Similarly, if the claim gets approved, your reputation increases by one token and if it gets rejected, then the reputation decreases. Users with High Indorse score will be more frequently chosen for indorsements.
It’s important to note that SCR tokens will be tied to personal IDs and won’t be tradable. Also, all indorsements will have equal value, no matter who makes them.
Now about ownership of your personal data.
The platform aims to solve problems of current centralized social media systems. As most social networks don’t charge fees for usage, they have to use advertising as a revenue stream. It means that your personal data is not private by any means and it’s actively used to show you targeted ads. Centralization of social networks gives them almost unlimited power and can be often used in abusive ways. The Indorse team claims that personal data will be owned only by the user. But you have an option to display your information to advertisers and get additional rewards.
Reward system is based on IND token. Users will get rewards based on their interaction with the system and amount of endorsed claims. These rewards will be regularly converted to IND tokens and distributed between users- Approximately 50% of the profit, while another 50% will be used to pay for operations of the platform. Indorse will have 2 revenue streams: advertising and human resource services. For all services on the network, people will have to use IND tokens. For example, advertisers will have to purchase IND on the open markets or directly from Indorse administrators.
According to the whitepaper, Indorse plans to integrate Status, decentralized messaging application. If things go well, other useful features will be added to the platform.
Indrose is running an ICO from August 8 – it will end in maximum of 30 days, they want to raise 50,000 eth and will send 1000 IND tokens in exchange for 1 etherum token. 35 % of total amount of coins will be distributed among investors. The team plans to spend 65% of raised funds on development, 20%- on sales and marketing, 10% on platform operations and put 5% into the Legal Fund.
Thanks for reading! Advantages and disadvantages of this ICO from my point of view are coming soon.)