Stellar Platform Hosts New “Facebook of the Blockchain” for Local Businesses
Blockchain-based Social Network
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Author: Malachy Caldwell
ICO News
1st May 2018 11.43 GMT
“Stellar offers a platform that supports high volume micro-transactions at high speed and low cost,” explains Serge Helou, CTO of FlipnPik, one of a number of recent blockchain projects choosing alternative platforms over market-leader Ethereum in what appears to be a growing trend.
The idea behind FlipnPik is simple: small to medium businesses, particularly more localised ones, are frustrated with the advertising models offered up by dominant social networks.
Facebook’s pricing model, for instance, is simply beyond the modest budget of most family businesses, and there are no incentive mechanisms to have loyal adepts of those same businesses actively promote awareness of them among their peers.
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This is where FlipnPik believes there is a market – by creating an app-based social network which rewards users for promoting their favourite restaurants, hairdressers and tattoo parlours, they receive payment in the project’s native token each time they introduce a new client to the business and to the app itself.
The incentive mechanism is taken further as rewards are handed out by the network itself for users who also introduce new businesses to the application. Ultimately, the idea is that rewards can be redeemed with other businesses platformed by the app, or simply exchanged for other crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin.
Whilst the idea has been conceived overall as a tool for helping small businesses get their message to a broader audience, the model nonetheless also offers room for established brands to get in on the act of paying their most loyal followers for performing marketing on their behalf.
Unlike most ICOs currently hitting the market, however, this is a project which has already been tested out on the field. FlipnPik already exists as an iPhone app and a test run for the business model was made in the Montreal area. The result? Over six hundred businesses signed up with ten times as many users also jumping onboard.
The project team is currently organising its ICO in a bid to raise the $40m it requires to push the idea to an international audience. Currently in private sale, however, those interested in participating in the token sale will need to wait until pre-sale opens in early July.