November 20th, 2018 at 11:46 am UTC · 4 min read
This July, Jeff Bezos – founder of Amazon – became the world’s richest person, and pursuit of E-commerce innovation by global capital reached an all-time high. It can be said that Blockchain and E-commerce are a match made in heaven. For blockchain, E-commerce is a natural liquidity pool, and for E-commerce, blockchain can help with efficiency and certainty.
E-commerce is the first use case of the Newton Project. Aside from internet blockchain technology itself, technologies and products like NewIoT, NewAI, and NewID will be applied to E-commerce scenarios. Newton’s upcoming NewMall product is the organization’s first “template” application created especially for E-commerce, which will reach a sales volume of 3 billion RMB next year. Aside from that, several E-commerce DApps are also in active development.
What makes NewMall different from traditional E-commerce is the use of NewIoT technology and trusted physical channel protocols which will be used throughout the entire sourcing process. Packaging will have a per sticker price of just RMB 0.1 – (the NewTag). Anyone handling the goods must use a phone with NewPay, and the NewIDs of all handlers are immediately visible on NewPay, as well as via timestamps on damaged NewTags. This data is concurrently distributed on NewNet, thereby achieving traceability down to the second.
In the hypothetical case of a malicious supplier or supply chain service provider manipulating any element of the logistical process, this data is retained and publicly disclosed as evidence, incentivizing good business practices.
The user is essentially the product. One frequently seen use case is when a user sees recommendations for a product on news channels or other media information sites, after having just found it on an E-commerce platform. Big data has become a lifeline for previous E-commerce giants. And subsidies for them to burn money can be later earned back through the sale of big data. After all, data on user purchases and credit, as well as personal information retention, are inherently stored centrally.
In NewMall however, user data including personal information and transactions are attached to a unified NewID, a DID using asymmetric encryption, so that only the users themselves have access to their personal data. This data is thereby permanently stored on the chain. If some third party requests access, the user has the option to authorize the transaction in exchange for a certain reward, or refuse it. Only in this way user data can become a true digital asset.
In the past, the only role of users was to serve as consumers. Even loyal 10-year users of Taobao or Amazon were unable to receive any portion of the platforms’ income, because instead, that income would simply line the pockets of a very few elite shareholders. Not just users, but logistics service providers and suppliers were ignored in this respect. So its clear how these oppositional relationships with users and upstream/downstream providers are inherent to the platforms themselves.
The difference in NewMall however is that users earn tokens as rewards for shopping. Browser ads, promotions, and even product delivery are regarded as contributions to the ecosystem. That means that users become platform shareholders through their purchases, essentially transforming the relationships between the platform and its users, and upstream/downstream providers from opposition to mutual beneficiaries. The platform will thereby also go from burning incentive money to earning its own rewards.
With traditional E-commerce platforms, due to the Matthew effect, merchants pay platforms up to 25% of turnover costs. NewMall, a platform based on blockchain technology, has an entirely different model, which greatly reduces transaction costs for merchants. And with this new approach, fees are reduced by at least 50% compared to traditional platforms.
A digital marketing system can be run on the basis of NewAI and NewMall. First, the merchant places ads based on NewAI data analysis; then clicks or purchases induced by the ads are completely and reliably tracked. Marketing plans can be executed through smart contracts, resolving the pain point that sees merchants lacking the data to calculate ROI.
E-commerce has reached a trillion-level market scale. Since the mobile internet has reached maturity, the big picture has been set, so dividends based on mobile commerce have almost all been consumed. The E-commerce infrastructure Newton is building however, not only includes blockchain, but also a powerfully tandem combination with AI and IoT, allowing disruption of sales, purchasing, supply chain, and marketing.